Numetal/Retromux
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@Pavel said in Numetal/Retromux:
I fear that the all-too-common assertion of this or that genre being particularly problematic abnegates the true bearers of responsibility: the players and staff playing those games. We can talk ad nauseam about systems and lore and thematic appropriateness, but that’s basically irrelevant—we’ve been having those conversations for the better part of two or three decades at this point.
I don’t disagree here, as there are many normal (or whatever) people playing and staffing on WoD games. I think the problem is a precursor to what we have now. Long ago no one curbed the behavior. Then we all put up with the behavior to our own detriment. Now it seems that the true WoDheads left are either very traumatized by said poor behavior and therefore trust no one, or are the perpetrators of said behavior. Then there’s are the people who are new to WoD on a MUSH and are deeply confused about this dichotomy.
But as you said,
Poor behaviour is only acceptable because people in positions of authority continue to accept it. Couching the problem as “this genre has its issues” is lazy and reductive and passes the buck from staff enforcement of behavioural standards to some ineffable ‘theme’ problem.
And while that is true, there are certain elements that may attract a certain kind of player to WoD over Star Wars. But it comes back to the historical “that’s how it’s always been” approach. If you see someone playing a Black Spiral Dancer, you have a short hand association of the kind of player they most likely are. It may not be accurate, but we’ve played with enough of them and have enough general understanding of the theme to know what RP they’re going for.
But hell, that’s probably incorrect now that I write that out given that the player who was banned from RetroMUX for violating the policy around erotic RP as a minor enacted this RP on a star wars game.
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A while ago I was perusing the policies of oWoD games and I was heartened to see that most of them are at least attempting to get with the times! There’s that extra effort. That extra work you have to put in. Naturally this involves deviating from the theme. You have to house rule a bunch of shit.
It also showed that a lot of staff were tired of dealing with the bad actors that certain splats attracted. Like… this tension exists! People try to work around it. To what effect, I’m not sure. But the theme invites it, and to insist otherwise seems a bit odd.
Like if I was deciding on a theme for a new game and I wanted MINIMAL work and stress and chaos between friends and enemies, I think I might just go for a custom theme as opposed to WoD. WoD is hardmode. It’s fun, but it’s fkn hard.
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@Yam said in Numetal/Retromux:
You have to house rule a bunch of shit.
I think this is a whole different conversation, because looking at the documentation for all of the active WoD games out there, at least a couple of them have house ruled too much.
Proud Member of the Pro-Mummy Alliance
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@MisterBoring whether you like how any particular person does it or not, yam’s point is that there is necessary work that must be done to make different spheres work together on MU. You will absolutely have to house rule system interactions, and if you don’t do it at the outset you will be doing it on the fly during scenes when players ask ‘how will this work?’.
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@hellfrog said in Numetal/Retromux:
yam’s point is that there is necessary work that must be done to make different spheres work together on MU.
I’m not disagreeing with that. I’m saying that there are games claiming to be WoD games that have house ruled their mechanics and the overall WoD plot so much that they aren’t WoD anymore.
It’d be like if I claimed to run a baseball league, but baseball in my league involved driving modified cars down a quarter mile track.
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@MisterBoring said in Numetal/Retromux:
I think this is a whole different conversation, because looking at the documentation for all of the active WoD games out there, at least a couple of them have house ruled too much.
At one end of the spectrum, Changeling has so many unclear and sometimes self-contradictory rules that it’s difficult to avoid ending up with a lot of house rules, even if most of them are essentially just “and this is the interpretation we’re going with.”
At the other end is “We don’t like the way Vampire Disciplines work by the book and so we’re going to introduce a completely new set of rules for them.”
My extremely cold take is that if you’re advertising your game as using such and such system, you should probably make an effort to stick to the rules of game system as much as possible, and that the fewer differences your players have to learn, the better. But then again, two different people may have wildly different ideas about how that looks in practice for any given game system.
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@Yam I think it’s as simple as because in WoD you play as ‘The Monster’ in some various way. Like you can play as a bad criminal guy or whatever in Star Wars and probably Star Trek too, or ‘bad people’ in Lords & Ladies etc etc. But they all still start with the premise that you’re a person just like any other in your particular situation.
WoD positions the players as monsters and oWoD even does things like having different morality as part of the systems of play and somehow I think that extra step removed from being a ‘normal person’, even a bad person, gives people that extra edge (heh!) to be horrible.
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I totally disagree with the idea that WOD places are the most dysfunctional games or attract the worst people. Like, sure, the blowups tend to be super public on them, but I’ve never been on any that were as poisonous as a bad superhero game.
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@Ashkuri said in Numetal/Retromux:
WOD was never designed for vampire and werewolf at the same table, much less Mage and everything else.
It’s not balanced for it
That’s not relevant on a MU unless you want to keep it short-lived enough that nobody can gain enough XP to be significantly more powerful than a new PC build.
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@Yam said in Numetal/Retromux:
I do not think saying you generally have your work cut out for you when running a game with very, very dated social mores is lazy and reductive.
I was, perhaps, unclear. What I meant was that people (usually shitty staff) allow negative behaviour and then cover it up with the excuse that the genre is at fault. Which is, or at least has been, a common thing.
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My own experience is that WoD is a special sort of disaster.
But Lords & Ladies is also a special sort of disaster.
Original theme is a special sort of disaster, too.
Comic books, star wars, star trek, urban fantasy, even bloody neanderthals are their own special sorts of disasters as well, and don’t get me started on Pern.The theme of any given game tends to suggest the sorts of disasters you’ll get there. Some are pretty universal - sex pests are everywhere, as are the power-hungry who believe that might makes right - but some themes lend themselves to certain behaviours.
I’ve seen as many horrific abuses of staff power in Original Themes as I have in Urban Fantasy; having The Character Who Is The Focus Of The Story lends itself to certain behaviours, whether that character’s actually on grid or not. Unwarranted OOC viciousness? Lords and Ladies wins there, hands down, because people who just have to be the prettiest princess can’t all be the prettiest princess, and if you don’t fall over yourself to worship the one right in front of you some of them will get very upset and think it’s perfectly justified to try and destroy you whether you’re a rival or some poor sod caught in the crossfire. Still, several of the other genres aren’t that far behind. It’s just that WoD is the thread that most of us have in common and WoD is where these boards started, so WoD is the shared understanding and the shared scars.
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I think the most challenging thing you can do in a the MU format is run a game that allows open pvp between players that dislike one another, are encouraged to do so because of theme, and not have it turn into an environment where players despise one another. This is compounded by staffers who do not see a point in trying, and players who enjoy the game exactly because of the environment it produces rather than in spite of it.
