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Pyrephox

I prefer web-based, but echo what people have said about anything being fine so long as it’s clear and well-documented.

Tez

Tez

Chud

Tez

Also banned: just watch me, a certain hunger, Sub-Zero, Hatsune Twe, kittypilled, smoke break

Pyrephox

Breaking prohibitions against politics, and being a bigoted piece of shit. No Nazi bars here, thanks. We’ll be deleting their posts.

Pyrephox

@Lain-Iwakura You’re pretty behind the times, then. Plenty of MUDs still exist - you might find r/MUD more to your preferences. This forum doesn’t generally talk much about them because they’re different audiences and different design philosophies.

But there’s plenty of discussion on r/MUD, and MUDs are still being made!

Pyrephox

I try to do a couple of different things, some of which have already been mentioned:

Try to read up on available plot hooks and backgrounds on other characters to find out what other players are interested in working with. (Sometimes this backfires, because people don’t necessarily always want the RP they put in their plot hooks/backgrounds - especially things like police/detective backgrounds.)
Seek people out. Don’t be afraid to say “Hey, I saw X on your RP Hooks, or that you’re involved in Y organization–my character is interested in that,” and see where it goes.
Listen! Pay attention to what people are throwing out in scenes, and respond to it. Give them a chance to talk about the things that excite their characters, do things their characters are good at doing.
Ask them for help in their characters’ areas of specialty. Sure, you can PROBABLY do whatever it is by yourself with a little prep, but it’s so much more fun to say, “Hey, I could use a face/muscle for this thing I want to do and I hear you’re good at that.”
React. Don’t be determined to be “too cool for school” about other characters’ weirdnesses. They were built that way for a reason - be grossed out, scared, weirded out, whatever. Go ahead and show a little emotion about other characters’ schitcks.
Reciprocity. If someone asks you for help IC, or gives you a bone–do the same in return. People notice, and in my experience, they’re so excited to have a real back and forth.

Pyrephox

@somasatori I think the big thing is that I’m not running a controlled intervention to see if someone can handle bad IC events - I’m just observing what happens naturally. And I’ve never really see someone who, for example, throws a sulking fit when they have a couple of bad dice rolls, who can also handle a big loss with grace and mutual fun.

I’m sure they exist! And people have bad days, where one small event is just the grimy cheese on the shit sandwich and you are just done. Which is why I try not to judge people too harshly for one bad reaction.

But if, over time, I notice someone who melts down regularly about the small stuff, I’m definitely not going to even hang around for the big stuff. It’s not worth my time or my hobby joy, and I don’t really care if it’s trauma, or a multitude of bad days, or whatever.

Pyrephox

@Nonsense said in Bad Stuff Happening IC:

Yeah, absolutely destroy my characters. I love the writing and the play that comes from difficult situations, poor outcomes, and otherwise “bad things” that affect a PC. Especially when it creates further story and RP opportunities in the aftermath. Of course there are limits, but these are also situations and lines that are already a hard ‘no’ in any game I’m going to play - and, as has also been mentioned a few times in this thread - trust is an important factor.

I’m generally very much of the opinion that failure is more thematically interesting than success. I love a failed roll, I love a failed mission, I love the drama. That has been where I’ve found my best success as a player and learned the most about the character.

I admit, here’s the flipside of the question (and this is not aimed at you specifically - I don’t think we’ve ever played together):

I don’t necessarily trust when a player says this, either to me-as-player or me-as-GM because often they do not mean it, so I am absolutely reluctant to actually pull the trigger on negative consequences because it is exhausting to deal with a lot of people after you do, and perhaps even more so the people who are very vocal about “Oh yeah, destroy my life, I can take it!”

And you can never know whether a person genuinely means it and is totally fine with things actually going south, or not.

The only real way, I’ve found, to know is to see how people handle small failures in play, before trying to work through the big setbacks with them.

Pyrephox

I ended up putting Other, because yes, I like bad things to happen to my character, but as always there are caveats.

Proportionality. I like bad things to happen to my character - I don’t like ONLY bad things to happen to my character. Trauma conga isn’t all that entertaining, give me time to breathe, recover, and let the character have things worth fighting for when the bad things happen.
Trust. I’m a fairly trusting player, to be honest, and I’ll roll with what a GM throws unless I have a specific reason not to trust them, but once that trust is lost, it doesn’t come back.
Sexual assault/mind control. These are not entirely “no go” bad things to have happen, but they are things where I would need a larger than normal amount of trust, and where I want to be brought in OOC to ensure that it remains a fun game for me.

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