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MU Peeves Thread
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@Juniper Yes, this is the genuine worst, and I am sorry.
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@helvetica said in MU Peeves Thread:
If you don’t know me and this is our first OOC interaction, do not call me “Daddy.” Just like, hold off on shit like that. Pump the breaks. Happy holidays.
Whatever. You’re not my REAL dad! I don’t have to do what you say!
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who is just calling people “daddy” out of the blue? jesus.
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There is a game I am on where I signed up for an event. At the event, was a particular person.
This person, for want of a better word, has a bit of a fan club on this game. People talk about this person a lot; they seem to have a lot of close friends, and people respond super enthusiastically when they do things, log on etc. etc.
I do not begrudge this person any of this, and to be honest, they do not seem to do anything to encourage it. From my point of view they do not do anything to -warrant- it, either. But, I am prepared to accept that is very subjective.
In this event, which was just a one-shot adventure-type thing with some light combat, I ended up nearly walking out part way through because this person’s fan club was so busy gushing over this person and trying to interact with this person that my character was totally ignored.
This happened multiple times, where the rest of the group just played as though my character was not there. As an example, my character did X thing on their turn. I checked it with the GM, rolled for it, it was in my pose. Nobody referenced it in their pose, acknowledged it had happened, or anything like that.
In the next round, this person does a very similar thing (similar enough to the point of being redundant in the circumstances). The rest of the group are falling over themselves to (ic and ooc) tell this person how clever they are, how cool and badass their idea was. Even the GM referenced them doing this thing in their pose, ignoring that my character had already done it.
It’s not a major thing, but man is it irritating. I wasn’t going to mention it, but the talk of cliquey groups brought it all rushing back! I have been kind of light on the details as I don’t dislike any of these people or want them to feel bad. However, if the purpose of the scene is a self-congratulatory, feel-good session with your in-group, maybe don’t paste it as a public event and invite people you’re not really interested in including.
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@Pacha said in MU Peeves Thread:
a self-congratulatory, feel-good session with your in-group
this is maybe going to sound facetious or hyperbolic but you just described probably 30-40% of all public events I’ve ever personally attended in my time MU*ing and it’s honestly part of the reason game fatigue sets in for me so quickly in my old cranky-ass age.
there was an age I was more willing to just tolerate these little cults of personality (for lack of a better term) that crop up but like…who tf has the time and energy for that, honestly. it baffles me.
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@Rucket said in MU Peeves Thread:
who is just calling people “daddy” out of the blue? jesus.
makes a vague gesture towards the Sydney queer community between 25 and 35…
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@Pacha said in MU Peeves Thread:
In the next round, this person does a very similar thing (similar enough to the point of being redundant in the circumstances). The rest of the group are falling over themselves to (ic and ooc) tell this person how clever they are, how cool and badass their idea was. Even the GM referenced them doing this thing in their pose, ignoring that my character had already done it.
It’s not a major thing, but man is it irritating. I wasn’t going to mention it, but the talk of cliquey groups brought it all rushing back! I have been kind of light on the details as I don’t dislike any of these people or want them to feel bad. However, if the purpose of the scene is a self-congratulatory, feel-good session with your in-group, maybe don’t paste it as a public event and invite people you’re not really interested in including.
That’s a sign of lazy STing, honestly. I don’t claim to be the world’s best ST or GM, but to me it’s very important to make sure that all players are seen or heard from, and those that contribute in a meaningful way are amplified. A good ST can make sure that someone doing something brilliant has it called attention to and not get lost because the PCs are busy congratulating something else for existing. That’s something we really intent to focus on with what we are building. We love the idea of innovative solutions to story issues, and want to encourage that. Even if it’s not the solution we had in mind when we started.
As far as cliques and such go, they exist. There’s no way for them not to, and we thought really long and hard on how we were going to word our clique policy because we get that people want to play at games with their friends. That’s a lot of the point, right? We just tried really carefully to try to find a way to draw the line at how a clique can impact other people on the game.
I don’t want to force anyone to RP with anyone they don’t want to RP with, but I also don’t want to let that person’s preference block someone else out of RP.
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@Alveraxus I am skeptical that cliques are something that can be effectively policied.
let it be a challenge to you
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@sao said in MU Peeves Thread:
@Alveraxus I am skeptical that cliques are something that can be effectively policied.
Yeah, they can’t. The policy page that we wrote up literally says that we can’t, but that we want to try to encourage people to go outside their clique when they can as a general principle.
The only time we would get involved is if a clique is also gate keeping, which is a whole other thing.
Most games have cliques. Usually, a clique is harmless to other players if it just exists on its own off to the side, unless they are sitting on top of something that other players want to be involved in. Except in some cases where it can lead to bullying, which again, hopefully, can be addressed with awareness. At least, I’d like to think so.
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@Alveraxus said in MU Peeves Thread:
@sao said in MU Peeves Thread:
@Alveraxus I am skeptical that cliques are something that can be effectively policied.
Yeah, they can’t. The policy page that we wrote up literally says that we can’t, but that we want to try to encourage people to go outside their clique when they can as a general principle.
The only time we would get involved is if a clique is also gate keeping, which is a whole other thing.
I think the big solution to this particular thing – that is, one player or a small group of players controlling an area of plot that more people should have access to – has to be solved on the staff side. And not by saying “you have to RP with these people about this thing,” but by simply giving more people access via GM fiat. If a plot thread isn’t spreading as much as you want, figure out how to drop more clues in the laps of other people who aren’t involved yet.
I just don’t think there’s ever a “general principle” here to even encourage people to do, really; people are motivated to RP with others for the fun of it, and you can’t fix anything by making it into an etiquette thing. I honestly think the best approach is to simply drop your GM story seeds in the laps of a variety of people.
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I’d advise against even having a policy that mentions cliques. Even though we all know friendship BAD
fr fr
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@Roz said in MU Peeves Thread:
I just don’t think there’s ever a “general principle” here to even encourage people to do, really; people are motivated to RP with others for the fun of it, and you can’t fix anything by making it into an etiquette thing. I honestly think the best approach is to simply drop your GM story seeds in the laps of a variety of people.
100% where we were going with it. We have Player and Staff Obligations outlined separately (and player obligations are minimal, really), but from a staff perspective we have this:
As a staff, we will do our best to ensure that any plot that we run will have multiple entry points, unless it is very specifically catered to a specific group, which itself will be a rarity. We admit that this may require some OOC conceits in order to be able to combat the very real IC leanings that might want to induce people to “keep things close to the vest”. We get that. But we would rather find creative ways to get everyone involved than create an environment where someone sees something fun that their character would want to be involved in, but cannot get to it.
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@hellfrog said in MU Peeves Thread:
I’d advise against even having a policy that mentions cliques. Even though we all know friendship BAD
Yeah. We’re still going back and forth on this. I think what we really want to promote is openness and accessibility, and to prevent any one group from driving players away from any one thing. It feels tricky to call it out, but sometimes you have to talk about the elephant in the room to avoid stepping in its poop.
Or something.
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@Alveraxus said in MU Peeves Thread:
It feels tricky to call it out, but sometimes you have to talk about the elephant in the room to avoid stepping in its poop.
I admit I loled at this a bit. Is it really the elephant in the room?? It’s one of the community’s favorite topics of conversation to rehash
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@Alveraxus said in MU Peeves Thread:
@hellfrog said in MU Peeves Thread:
I’d advise against even having a policy that mentions cliques. Even though we all know friendship BAD
Yeah. We’re still going back and forth on this. I think what we really want to promote is openness and accessibility, and to prevent any one group from driving players away from any one thing. It feels tricky to call it out, but sometimes you have to talk about the elephant in the room to avoid stepping in its poop.
Or something.
While I am also skeptical that cliques can be effectively policed, defining a game’s culture is as useful for players as it is for admin.
With ares games where you can see all the logs neatly organized, I’ve seen cliques form around a plot thread like a swarm of locusts ready to eat it all up – and I honestly don’t think any of those people saw themselves as a clique. They probably just saw themselves as organized. And that’s a slippery slope, because having organized players who are inclusive can make or break a story.
Going in with the intention of “keeping a close eye on groups of players who come off as insular” might be less charged than naming thee a clique or whatever the fuck.
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@Alveraxus said in MU Peeves Thread:
@hellfrog said in MU Peeves Thread:
I’d advise against even having a policy that mentions cliques. Even though we all know friendship BAD
I think what we really want to promote is openness and accessibility
Here’s the thing, though. A lot of gamers have a LONG history with one another. And sometimes a KEY piece of a game’s accessibility is the ability for some players to block and 100% ignore each other both IC’ly AND OOC’ly. So. Anything that is depending on player A /having/ to interact with player B to move meta-plot forward is going to die as an option if only player A or B has a piece of info that the other would need in order to have the clues spread through the game.
This is easily done by staff and story-tellers having all kinds of similar and over-lapping seeds where you only need a percentage of folks to work together to solve it, or to have a few groups solve it from various different and cool perspectives. But to have Players have to be responsible for needing to scene with people who have shown bad faith and intentional fuckery in the past? It’s not going to end well for anyone, and it’s very possible that many plots will just dead end before they’ve even gotten started.
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@Jenn said in MU Peeves Thread:
But to have Players have to be responsible for needing to scene with people who have shown bad faith and intentional fuckery in the past? It’s not going to end well for anyone, and it’s very possible that many plots will just dead end before they’ve even gotten started.
Yeah. I don’t mean to derail this thread with too much talk about our game which is not yet open (haha, you all can trash us fully once we’re open, we’re bracing for it
), but this is 100% our belief and Roz called out how it’s a staff obligation above. We have that as a guiding principle, and what we’re really trying to call out with our “policy” is staff obligation to find a way to work other players into things they want to be in WITHOUT having to rely upon players RPing with anyone they don’t want to RP with. We have this listed above everything else on the gatekeeping page:Prime Directive: We do not, and will not, compel anyone to RP with anyone that they do not want to RP with. Period.
The onus is on US, as Staff and Storytellers, to get Player A to where they want to go if Players B, C, and D don’t want to actively engage with them to get them there.
Then they can stare vacantly across the empty pond at each other and not interact, but each dip their toes in happily.
Or something like that, anyway.
(Unless they are really dirty enough to pollute the entire pond with their toe, and then we’ll be right there with you tossing them out.)
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@sao said in MU Peeves Thread:
@Alveraxus I am skeptical that cliques are something that can be effectively enforced.
I agree that they simply can’t. I think as far as this topic goes, really the only effective action that can be taken from a Staff/ST perspective is to ensure they’re not in a position to gatekeep public RP (and specific plot hooks) from other players.
As far as players consciously avoiding and being able to avoid other people of their choosing, that’s a whole other topic but it’s a necessary prerogative, IMO. It’s just a lot harder to do that on some games than others.
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Sometimes there’s a difficulty in that there isn’t gatekeeping in a direct way so much as someone who is unpleasant to a person who wants to engage being all over everything but its not personal or purposeful targeting. I call that plot-licking. When someone is so all over everything they need to answer or dominate all conversations, spam everything, seem distressed if they are not able to be “helpful” to everything going on with it. Kinda akin to the toddler that just loves a thing so much they have to slobber all over it in that primal way.
A lot of times it can be just easier to stay away. I definitely have someone I avoid now because their ooc behavior towards me made me super uncomfortable (I don’t believe it to be personal in my observation and it wasn’t breaking any rules, could be they were just trying to be funny and it bombed for me, so its not a reportable thing.) and really has made me not want to proactively engage again not because they are horrible but because I just don’t want to be stressed out! But because of this person’s high activity I have to really think hard about if/how I want to engage with things and don’t pursue other things because I just find it off-putting. And other people haven’t been weirded out by this person so this is a me thing.
So it does chase me away from certain things. However, I don’t think it’s their fault and one person’s slobbering all over everything is another’s active engagement. I’m not sure its possible for staff to really see that necessarily!
I actually think though that its this sort of thing that curtail more people from jumping into things they want rather than flagrant NONE SHALL PASS. I do think though that its the person that’s put off’s responsibility to learn how to work past or accept some way around it.
Some people just don’t click and that should be fine. But I am always super grateful for structures that allow for many alternate pathways to info or plot interaction even though its more work. Sometimes players rub each other the wrong way! No one should be penalized for that imo. But its good to have that in mind when figuring out access!
