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MU Peeves Thread
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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.”
Wow, I can actually taste how unpleasant that is. It’s bitter, almost like chewing aspirin. Jesus.
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@helvetica said in MU Peeves Thread:
My peeve is… not too serious, so if you do take it very seriously… that’s your personal choice. But it has happened three times now with three different people. 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.
I could live a long fucking life without ever hearing it ever, whether I’m the target or not.
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Also dealing with cool shit and / or story being gatekept by a player who is just deeply unpleasant to be around. It’s better for everyone if I’m not inflicting my presence on someone I don’t like, but damn, it still sucks.
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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.
