MU Peeves Thread

[Jenn]

@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.

[Alveraxus]

@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.)

[SpaceKhomeini]

@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.

[mietze]

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!

[bear_necessities]

I’m in a bit of a COVID brain fog so if I missed something huge here I’m sorry, but you can’t policy around everything and if you try to policy around it all, you’re just going to exhaust yourself.

Focus on telling stories and giving people access to the stories.

[Roadspike]

@mietze Yeah. This is definitely something I both see and feel very much so. And I think that about the only thing Staff can do is specifically stake out some events for “people who haven’t gotten as involved as they’d like” to create some GMed scenes without plot-lickers. It’s not a perfect solution and has its own problems, but it’s -something- at least.

[Aria]

@mietze said in MU Peeves Thread:

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.

This. Not too long ago, I encountered a player like this who got involved in everything. And when I say that, it’s not me being hyperbolic.

I mean they made me super uncomfortable with open IC hostility for posing into a public event, when they had never met nor interacted with my character before and who I did not, as far I was aware, have any previous interactions with on other games or really know OOC aside from passing channel conversations. On the game where I first encountered them, it reached a point that there was literally one PRP left that they weren’t involved in. The PRP-runner was kind enough to include me in and then said player decided that should be under their IC purview, too, and pushed their way into it because of what type of plot it was.

Cue me encountering them displaying the exact same kind of behavior on the next three games I tried, some of which were running concurrently. It has reached a point where I have seriously wondered if this person sleeps because I have no idea how they have the energy or the brain space to RP this many things, at this pace, across this many games all at once.

Also can I possibly use their blood to sustainably power my house?

[SpaceKhomeini]

@Aria said in MU Peeves Thread:

@mietze said in MU Peeves Thread:

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.

This. Not too long ago, I encountered a player like this who got involved in everything. And when I say that, it’s not me being hyperbolic.

I mean they made me super uncomfortable with open IC hostility for posing into a public event, when they had never met nor interacted with my character before and who I did not, as far I was aware, have any previous interactions with on other games or really know OOC aside from passing channel conversations. On the game where I first encountered them, it reached a point that there was literally one PRP left that they weren’t involved in. The PRP-runner was kind enough to include me in and then said player decided that should be under their IC purview, too, and pushed their way into it because of what type of plot it was.

Cue me encountering them displaying the exact same kind of behavior on the next three games I tried, some of which were running concurrently. It has reached a point where I have seriously wondered if this person sleeps because I have no idea how they have the energy or the brain space to RP this many things, at this pace, across this many games all at once.

Also can I possibly use their blood to sustainably power my house?

I’m fairly certain I know of whom you speak and this person is like a stinkbug infestation.

[Jenn]

@SpaceKhomeini NGL… Like. The voice in my head insists this has to be me. Because I’m usually bored af and just looking for ANY distraction to give me another ten minutes of moving forward. And I absolutely know that if I were other folks, I’d be annoying the crap out of myself. So. On the vague chance it is me, or has been me, or later becomes me… Everyone has blanket permission to ask me to cut back on the plot licking and I’ll do my damnedest to accommodate.

[SpaceKhomeini]

@Roadspike said in MU Peeves Thread:

@mietze Yeah. This is definitely something I both see and feel very much so. And I think that about the only thing Staff can do is specifically stake out some events for “people who haven’t gotten as involved as they’d like” to create some GMed scenes without plot-lickers. It’s not a perfect solution and has its own problems, but it’s -something- at least.

One of the things that got me disengaging more often than not in the last year or so was repeatedly running afoul of the same handful of sharing-averse people with a sense of manic “pick-me” energy who manage to maneuver their characters into positions of key plot importance (often just based on who they know) in ways that barely made sense to me. If I’m going to basically play an NPC, I should probably just go do something else.

[SpaceKhomeini]

@Jenn

I had no idea who you are and went to go look at your playlist and I don’t recognize a single one of these names. So no flames from me.

[Aria]

@SpaceKhomeini said in MU Peeves Thread:

@Jenn

I had no idea who you are and went to go look at your playlist and I don’t recognize a single one of these names. So no flames from me.

@Jenn What ^ dude said. I think the only game we were on at the same time was Ithir and you seemed perfectly lovely to me from our limited interactions.

[mietze]

My experience with the people who need to be everything and everywhere is that they honestly wouldn’t recognize themselves being described because either they really don’t care or they feel that they’re justified.

If you don’t try to shout over people, if you don’t feel the need to dominate every conversation to bring it back to how you are also very special and important to the thing in question, if you do not compulsively seek to make sure you’re involved in Everything Important for All The Things and getting antsy when someone else is doing something so you’ve got to be there all the time–then probably you’re not a plot-licker, or at least, not the type that is annoying to me personal.

But you, and me, and everyone else–we’ve all annoyed SOMEBODY on a game. Probably every game we’ve ever been on! Just hopefully not like that!

[Roz]

@mietze said in MU Peeves Thread:

I call that plot-licking.

that’s AMAZING

[Kestrel]

I’m not currently playing anything so I mean, maybe things are different now and better than I remember them being.

I’ll say though that I’ve often encountered the opposite problem — where you really want more people to get involved, but they’ll say stuff like, ‘Oh I don’t know if I should! I took part in a plot just last week and don’t want to take up too much space.’

I caught myself thinking to myself as I was reading some of these posts, ‘Is it me, am I like this?’ But then I also remembered the common struggle to encourage proactivity, and combat this common introverted shyness/anxiety seen in MU* players who feel obliged to toe the line more than they really need to.

All this to very vaguely say — there’s a Goldilocks Zone here. All things in moderation, including moderation.

[Tributary]

@mietze Once upon a time, I accidentally licked my friend’s plot because I was just so excited about it and didn’t realize that I was stepping on toes. It was new and shiny and I wanted to participate and…

And people clued me in that I’d gotten slobber everywhere, and I apologized to my friend who didn’t want to bring it up with me out of fear that it could make things awkward. Which, naturally, made things awkward when I realized I’d gotten drool all over this nice plot.

My friend was glad that I understood boundaries and that I didn’t want to be an inadvertent plot-licker. And our conversation gave us the opportunity to figure out the best way to engage together on the plot. Because in the end, my enthusiasm was appreciated! Just within reason, right?

[Jenn]

@Tributary You truly are and continue to be one of my very favorite interwebs people. I know I say that to a lot of y’all, but. I MEAN it to every danged one of y’all.

[Gashlycrumb]

Lots of MUs have controlled cliques since somewhere shortly after the year dot. It’s really normal and done in a +R way. Games that have +votes and XP (or some other mechanicy-reward) linked to votes tend to also not let you vote for the same person over and over. Maybe you can vote for them once a day, or once a week, or once a month. Players who get out more will earn more XP.

(Cliques will break this system if you let people award each other bonus XP for PrPs. But really, the gaining extra XP for getting to do stuff is like giving you an ice cream cone for doing such a good job eating your hot fudge sundae and isn’t a great plan.)

One might try a setup where instead of resetting after a period of time, it resets after you vote for the nth different PC. You either need to form a clique with more than n members, or you need to play outside your group. I would guess that people wouldn’t object to that, mainly because it’s not a punishment or a critique of their individual behavior. (And they’re quite justified in disliking being punished or criticised for RPing with whom they like.)

There’s also the possibility of not only spreading your plot hooks/story seeds across a wide variety of laps, but also purposefully dropping those seeds to people who actively spread the fun around. And seldom dropping them them to people who won’t, as it is a less efficient use of GM time.

[Cobalt]

When a player returns to a game your active on who directly lead to you being verbally abused RL. And then shortly after one of their buddies returns who outed another player as trans to you that would probably be uncomfortable with people knowing it IF it was even true.

Really kills all desire to continue playing.

Also, yes, I know I’m vaguebooking.

[Gashlycrumb]

@Cobalt So much feels.

Joined a game after a player who likes to attack me said they had quit. They hadn’t. Avoid interacting with them. Know full well they undermine my IC efforts without any IC motivation, and have made up a ‘prophecy’ about my PC that sentences PCs who work with him to DOOOOOOM.

Now watching player decisions turn what was a fun action scene into PC-destroying disaster and it’s very hard not to wonder how very much of that was OOC hostility.