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IC Consequences and OOC Acceptance
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@Kassien said in IC Consequences and OOC Acceptance:
what is the difference between reality and science fiction? Science Fiction has to make sense.
For your, hopefully, edification:
The difference between reality and fiction? Fiction has to make sense. Attributed to Tom Clancy, though there are similar quotes from Mark Twain: “Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities, truth isn’t” and G.K. Chesterton: “Truth must necessarily be stranger than fiction, for fiction is the creation of the human mind and therefore congenial to it.” -
I can’t stand playing heroes most the time.
I don’t mind at all when my characters die. It doesn’t upset me as I guide them into consequences. The same with failure and losing. I’ve never griped in my years of mushing once about consequences.
I think I would rather play nothing but NPC villains and grey/dark characters if I could have my druthers and ultimate RP enjoyment. I like temporary characters that are impactful but don’t need to run years. I don’t get too attached.
Mostly I play grey hats and in knowing that about my staff I’m always open to staff and consequences and I’m very easy to work with when approached about them. But that’s my perspective. I don’t like playing the hero much, so I don’t need to win, really, ever. In fact, I mostly lose in the end.
I think I’m in the minority there?
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@Buttercup said in IC Consequences and OOC Acceptance:
I’ve never griped in my years of mushing once about consequences.
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@Buttercup I had to request Arx staff a log of you threatening in pages to have them overrule my character about IC consequences yours earned.
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@Buttercup said in IC Consequences and OOC Acceptance:
I can’t stand playing heroes most the time.
I don’t mind at all when my characters die. It doesn’t upset me as I guide them into consequences. The same with failure and losing. I’ve never griped in my years of mushing once about consequences.
You have griped about your consequences to multiple people I know.
But honestly this to me seems very illustrative of a pretty common MU* thing, which is that players often communicate that they’re much better about consequences than they are in practice.
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Refresh my memory?
Not sure who you were on Arx?
I never argued with staff much about it. I don’t necessarily agree with character driven consequences. I did complain about players who couldn’t separate IC and OOC.
I’m assuming it’s an Abbas related thing?
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I should probably clarify. I accept staff rulings when consequences are sorted out.
I’ve griped or complained about about IC to IC things I didn’t find reasonable and let staff work out the details. But that is why you have staff right? As a vehicle to resolution?
I had multiple PCs die without complaint on the Reach (in fact I was the first PC death there under Atlantis on a dice role).
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@Buttercup said in IC Consequences and OOC Acceptance:
I don’t necessarily agree with character driven consequences.
Character-driven consequences are probably the most common form of consequence when your actions impact other characters. Like, what does this mean? You only accept staff rulings? If anyone else pushes back, that doesn’t count?
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Depends on the circumstances? No, I don’t always agree with IC consequences when they aren’t in line with rules from IC characters. Mostly, I’ve not had problems with IC to IC interactions and consequences.
Not saying my perception about myself isn’t wrong. It may be. And I’m open to adjusting.
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@Buttercup How many people did you page threatening to have staff overrule about IC actions that you can’t recall this occasion? Our only ooc interaction was you paging me these threats and me telling you to go right ahead and go to staff. If that’s an ic/ooc separation issue, it isn’t mine.
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Did I misremember that you also played Ahriman?
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While correcting an assertion of fact which may be in error is fine, before this gets too far:
A gentle reminder to stay mindful that we are in Game Gab, not Rough and Rowdy.
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Last post deleted since I read this one.
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In any event, all this ancient history aside, I think the important point to come out of that is @Roz’s point that players frequently say (or believe) that they are better about taking consequences than they are in practice. I feel like everyone has been frustrated by game stuff in this hobby, it’s not a question of whether you love stuff going badly for your character so much as what you do with the energy when something does hit you wrong.
Venting privately, sure ok. Get up and go for a walk. This week at one point a thing happened and I had to pause on my rp partner in a different scene and go mash my face in a cat. The problem is when those bad feelings become somebody else’s problem.
let it be a challenge to you
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I actually think it’s hugely common that players do not have an entirely accurate read on how chill they are with consequences. Like, the vast majority of players, IMO. Myself included, most of my friends, lots of RPers I think are great, etc.
The differences come down to, yeah, how you handle stuff even when it stuff doesn’t shake out how you want.
she/her | playlist
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@Roz said in IC Consequences and OOC Acceptance:
I actually think it’s hugely common that players do not have an entirely accurate read on how chill they are with consequences. Like, the vast majority of players, IMO. Myself included, most of my friends, lots of RPers I think are great, etc.
The differences come down to, yeah, how you handle stuff even when it stuff doesn’t shake out how you want.
Even after nearly 30 years (!!!) of MU*ing, I still struggle with this (bolded). The worst part is my brain will assume everything is fine with other people unless they explicitly say something. So my behavior persists, even if it’s shitty or problematic behavior.
Like on Arx, I was called out for being arrogant (amongst other things) and I was like: “… I was?” I’ve tried to be better, but I still have no awareness on how much room for growth there is. I all but live off of feedback to tell me where I’m at because I can’t trust my own measurements.
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@sao said in IC Consequences and OOC Acceptance:
In any event, all this ancient history aside, I think the important point to come out of that is @Roz’s point that players frequently say (or believe) that they are better about taking consequences than they are in practice. I feel like everyone has been frustrated by game stuff in this hobby, it’s not a question of whether you love stuff going badly for your character so much as what you do with the energy when something does hit you wrong.
Venting privately, sure ok. Get up and go for a walk. This week at one point a thing happened and I had to pause on my rp partner in a different scene and go mash my face in a cat. The problem is when those bad feelings become somebody else’s problem.
I don’t have a cat to mash my face into, and I feel this is to my detriment. My dog is too wiggly.
These discussions occasionally remind me of what I fondly call Dirt Road RP. I’d RP’d in other games, but RedwallMUCK was my first MU*, and given it was Redwall, a series of children’s books about sword wielding mice, it turned out I was one of the older players on the game (a whole…20 years old? Eesh).
See, the thing was, RedwallMUCK was very freeform, and character creation was extremely quick and easy. You logged in, you chose your species, your name, wrote a desc, you got a quick nod from some player that had been on the game long enough, and you were in. There were various portals to parts of the game (the grid was enormous), but the portal almost every new player chose was the one that dropped you in front of Redwall Abbey. Because it’s Redwall Abbey. This room was The Dirt Road.
Because most newbies ended up in that single room, and it was a very active game, what you’d get would be newbies rolling straight out of character creation, still hyped because they’ve spent at most five minutes between connecting for the first time and being able to play, right on top of other newbies, at which point the battles would begin. Evil weasel assassin? Aha, there’s a badger warrior ready to fight you. Here’s my super deadly poison that I stab you with. Ah, the badger has backflipped five times in full plate armor. Oh no, I have been stabbed in the shoulder (it’s always the shoulder).
This would go on for thirty minutes or so, maybe more, maybe less, often with other newbies, either fresh from chargen or a day or two on the game, joining in on the brawl. Everyone would get stabbed in the shoulder or be poisoned by the most deadly poison ever, then they’d get tired and haul themselves off to Redwall’s infirmary to have dramatic healing RP or log off.
They could be frequently annoying (we’re talking 13 year olds), and they were usually terrible writers, but I generally loved these players, because as long as they were running around being dramatic and heroic (or spooky eeevil) they were happy, and if they got dragged into an actual plot and were able to do that, they were ecstatic and would roll with just about anything.
In contrast, the biggest problem player I knew for the years I played there was close to a decade older than I was. He was (very, very comparatively, I suppose) a better writer than most any of the newbies, he could string together a semi coherent plot and make active orgs that would attract other players like flies, but he would also throw an absolute shitfit over the smallest (and sometimes the weirdest) things. He nuked the biggest org he created (and possibly the biggest, most active one the game ever had) because someone criticized the fact that he’d always set his characters up to be THE hero fighting the big bad villain (which he usually also played). He would get sulky and extremely passive aggressive both IC and OOC whenever he didn’t get his way, or another character disagreed with his. At one point he decided to just dramatically kill off the characters he was playing the moment the character was ICly criticized (he once had his character suddenly drop dead when someone yelled at him). Worse? He’d be an absolute asshole to anyone he perceived as getting more attention than him. For example, another player made a big, very active villain org that happened to be bigger and more active than his current (non-villain) org was, and he started hounding this player in pages.
The major differences between these two types of players, in my mind, were expectations and approach. The newbies I’m talking about were almost always brand spanking new to RP, they came in fresh with character archetypes straight from the books they thought were cool, they found other players exactly like them, and they immediately went to work having a fun and goofy ass fight with total strangers where they all got to do the cool things. That’s what they wanted and that’s what they expected. Plots? Even better. So long as they could do cool things, they were happy about other people being able to do cool things, and they were happy enough to ‘lose’ so long as they didn’t lose all the time and they were able to keep doing the cool things.
Meanwhile, the other character type, often the better writers and older players (though I’m generalizing, there were plenty of new players that were the worst in this department too), wanted to do the cool things with an audience, rather than partners, often because to them the cool things required being the sole hero or singular big bad villain, and if they couldn’t be that (and they couldn’t, there were, you know, other players) they got frustrated and jealous. Because they viewed their character as this big important figure that other characters existed around, they got their ego caught up and invested in the character. Anyone who didn’t see their character the way they thought they should be seen, or react to them the way they thought they should react, was being mean and unfair, and any consequences, any at all - Redwall was a completely consent based game, so it’s not like there were many of those - were intolerable. The dude I used as an example just seemed fucking miserable most of the time, with the exceptions being when he had that audience he wanted, or when he let his expectations go for a brief while and actually played on the same cooperative field as everyone else - and when he did that? He was just fine. He was just unwilling to do that for 95% of his time, years and years, on the game, so he spent most of it chasing old glory and alienating every potential RP friend he made.
