@Snackness I’m so sorry. 
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RE: Real Life Struggles/Support/Ventposted in No Escape from Reality
@junipersky I hate to say it, but even though permanency is super important to kids, the likelihood is that the court will terminate and then the parent will immediately appeal. I dunno about yours but our department typically won’t finalize adoption while appeal is still pending because it is SUCH a mess if lightning strikes and a term is reversed. If they aren’t warning you about this, beware optimism.
I’m sorry you’re going through this – reminds me of a time we had to stop mid term and do a mistrial because a parent testified that they were high on the stand. Had to start over 5 weeks later in front of a different judge. Term trials are very hard to schedule especially in jurisdictions without a lot of court availability. Winceing at that failure to subpoena because I have been in that boat-- sometimes IDK who my witnesses are until my dependency parent shows up with them at the term trial and demands we let them testify. Our AAG used to let them because she knew a witness like that was unlikely to hurt her case against the parent and the failure to offer evidence could give them grounds for that appeal.
I hope I am wrong and your final orders are actually final but it sounds like there’s some obstinacy, so. Fingers crossed for you.
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RE: Real Life Struggles/Support/Ventposted in No Escape from Reality
<3<3<3 @Snackness and I am glad you have a support system but I am definitely thinking of you.
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RE: Real Life Struggles/Support/Ventposted in No Escape from Reality
@Snackness Honey, I am so, so sorry.
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RE: Real Life Struggles/Support/Ventposted in No Escape from Reality
@Jenn My dad and I have a solid support system in place, but I really appreciate the offer. It means a lot.
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RE: World Tone / Feelingposted in Game Gab
@Faraday said in World Tone / Feeling:
The important thing is to set expectations.
Agreed. Even the most well-thought-out story-based consequence can feel like a capricious punishment rather than an interesting story moment if there’s no communication and the player is blind-sided.
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RE: World Tone / Feelingposted in Game Gab
@Ominous said in World Tone / Feeling:
For MU*s, pretty much every action is not standardized, so the GM should always be informing the player what failure looks like
To be honest, most of the consequences I’ve experienced in games haven’t involved dice rolls at all. They’ve been the result of stupid decision making, some of which was because of stupid players trying to win stupid prizes, but plenty of others could be chalked up to a misunderstanding between players, or player and storyteller. So there’s often no ‘I am going to attack him with my longsword’ pre-action discussion time. Someone calls the Prince of Vancouver an American and suddenly there’s a blood hunt, all because of a lack of communication or clarity.
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RE: World Tone / Feelingposted in Game Gab
@Ominous said in World Tone / Feeling:
if the consequence of failure isn’t already clear
I think this point here is often a point of contention. What’s obvious to the person running the story isn’t always obvious to those of us playing the story, especially if it hasn’t been communicated accurately. Sure, some of the responsibility is on the players to ask follow up questions, but I’d really advocate for those telling the story to go that extra half a mile in making hazards and risks more explicit.
Sometimes it can be exciting to be surprised by a risk you hadn’t anticipated. Sometimes being reckless does need to get a rap across the knuckles. But you really do have to work at framing the consequences as story beats and not the punishments they can so easily seem like.
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RE: Player Ratiosposted in Game Gab
I think a lot of expectations seem reasonable on the surface–if games happened in a vacuum or were run by robots. They do not and are not.
I think everyone is happier in the long run if when they notice that they do not get a response in the amount of time before they start to feel resentful and this seems to be the rule rather than the exception either they need to accept that and play with what they have or it is time to move on.
Staying while mad and steeping in resentment poisons the experience even when it is your turn, and can also affect everyone you are around too. It doesn’t really matter why. If the Could/Should isn’t happening for you, it probably isn’t personal (unless thats your usual experience across different gamerunners and genres, in which case perhaps some introspection is needed). But it is good to make some realistic expectations shifts in how much mental energy and time you want to invest in a game where for whatever reason there’s a mismatch in what you get vs what you feel you’re giving.
And sometimes players need time off to recover from a previous bad experience elsewhere. Few things kill staff or storytelling morale (or player morale) than a player vomiting game trauma dumping all over them and having a huge chip on their shoulder about how other people have wronged them elsewhere and are unable to interact without mentioning it frequently.
