MU Peeves Thread

[L. B. Heuschkel]

Async is my staple and I don’t mind Glacial (those that take more than a week) either – but it’s important to be clear about what a scene is before firing it up. Otherwise, half the people in it are going to be frustrated and the other half stressed.

[mietze]

I do think that there is something to “we don’t have to end because you’re going to have to go for the day so let’s not” that is tempting especially if you ARE enjoying things at that time.

Before, when people had to go it broke up, maybe with a hey can we meet again and pick this vibe/topic up again. You can tell some of the more experienced people because they often do suggest a wrap on things rather than defaulting to let’s move async! I have not had a lot of experience with deliberate async stuff (maybe 1 or 2 scenes and by that I mean expecting that there is going to be 8-10+ hours between poses and it mag take several days/a week or whatever). One was for a once a day multiple pc scene where people would do a couple of sentences or maybe more and half really didn’t even seem to read anyone else’s or excluding others (this to me is forgivable in a moving scene esp once its more than 2 folks but when you are posing once in 24 hours? ) and I fell apart after a couple of days. I have been in one that was enjoyable but I think it was someone who primarily played async and had learned how to deal with dumbasses like me.

We talked about length of real time for the whole scene. About how many poses per day. It was not a time sensitive thing. It was something that could easily be dropped into the ic timeline immediately once finished (thats the other thing I struggle with. Some timeywimey is okay esp when insertion will happen after the whole thing is done or negotiating where certain things will slip in but with social stuff or non plot heavy things I struggle with how to internally keep how it affects my pc and when straight!) It was slow paced but the depth and attentiveness was awesome and really pulled some of my best writing out of me!

I wish I remembered to check in like that or when a scene is transitioned but a lot of the time I’m excited and in the moment and I do tend to thrive on spontaneous play. So I forget or think i will do it later. And then fret when I realize I should have and probably people are already annoyed.

[Third Eye]

@L-B-Heuschkel said in MU Peeves Thread:

Async is my staple and I don’t mind Glacial (those that take more than a week) either – but it’s important to be clear about what a scene is before firing it up.

Up to a point this is fine. I assure you, I do this with people I have not played with before who want async. I’m someone who does not have an issue nudging people OOC or taking a certain amount of narrative direction to fade. In part this is why I’ve done well with Ares, up to a point.

But it really feels like something happened over the course of the last two years in which async became a lot more pronounced, more tilted toward glacial, and a lot more the default assumption to heavily Ares players and this year I have been really wondering where it came from. Is the Ares population growing more unique/separate from games that don’t use the scene system and this is just what has happened with the culture of it? Are people from forums and Discord gravitating to it and bringing their habits? I do not know. I feel like I stepped out of something of an RP bubble that I’d been in for three years, then essentially took a break for a year, then stepped back into Ares RP and it really does feel like the vibe around async has changed.

[Jenn]

For me… I actually don’t care. I love a slow asynch with a pose every three days as people have time. I love a snappy live that kills a few hours and is fun and done. I think all kinds of scenes and styles have their benefits and their detriments, and I’m happy to collaborate into the styles that work best. My only peeve is when folks aren’t honest about what’s going on or why.

Of course… There are also then the moments when it all goes off the rails and you spend 4 days with broken internet angry that it’s not your pose in like, twelve scenes and they’re typing at everyone under the sun EXCEPT YOU only to come to a month later to realize your internet was not functioning and it was your pose all along in each of them and you’ve been passive aggressive snarking your friends for a week with broken internet while they’re waiting on you to get your shit together… And after a month, you do, but forgot what was happening prior and oh, hell.

It’s been a year, y’all. 2024 is holding 2012’s beer and I’m scared. If I owe you poses, poke me. If I’ve been a dumbass and owe you apologies, poke me. If we’re all just having a bad time and need hugs and support and understanding, poke me.

[Pavel]

[Testament]

Ever since I changed jobs, my hours have gotten real weird in regards to RP. So async is pretty much how I’m going to exist save on weekends.

I once thought that being active on 3rd shift hours was tough, I think working on 2nd shift is worse.

[Nilli]

@Third-Eye This isn’t a “last two years” thing, but as someone who MU*d a lot when I was in high school/college, and then stopped and only got back to it in the last couple of years, there’s also the shift in how LONG scenes take. Two hours used to be SO LONG and now it feels like two hours just isn’t enough time to get through most scenes. AND now most of us are adults with jobs and families and other responsibilities other than writing that psych paper between poses, so carving out more than two hours for RP can be hard!

[Pavel]

@Nilli said in MU Peeves Thread:

other responsibilities other than writing that psych paper between poses

Some of us are doing that too.

[mietze]

@Nilli this is so interesting because sometimes I have the opposite experience! People drift away/check out a lot sooner (I don’t think this is a bad thing at all!) but when I was at the height of my mushing availability while little social pops often weren’t very long, if there was any kind of “big” scene it would take hours. And this was in the days were you were expected to look at people to see their descs not like the first hour being taken up by entrances describing them!

So if a timestop got dropped and combat was on or any kind of vs too, you were looking at potentially several days being unable to do anything else until the next arranged though usually that was the next night! I do my best to keep anything I run that’s social 3 hours or less (and would have loved it back in the olden days).

but this is why second phone line was a necessity, so you weren’t blocking all phone calls for like 6 hours +

I wonder if scenes take longer than they would have otherwise now because people are more into breaks/drifting (i love work slow all day stuff too), wheras at least on some of the games I used to play if you weren’t ready with your action/response when the GM called on you nobody was going to wait on you and you’d be skipped, which definitely had some implications sometimes. (I’m still a fan of GMs giving time limits and stuff though.)

[RedJellyBean]

@Rathenhope This. This is exactly what goes through my head and it bites. I realize that’s probably not it. But at the same time, I can’t help thinking they’ve found something shiny and new to RP with and that’s why I feel like I’m getting the leftovers. And I know that’s silly.

[Rathenhope]

@RedJellyBean Are you in my head? Are you me?

[Ashkuri]

For me async is at its most useful as an easy way to pause and continue. I don’t miss being like “do you have the last couple poses, my client crashed”

I like async alright in one on one scenes where I plan to write heaps of shit per pose.

Async that goes on and on forever is something I will do if I have great vibes with a person, but as real-time is my preference and I like to stay busy, sometimes I start feeling like I’ve started outpacing my own RP and it’s hard to write two timelines. I also find it hard to pose out of these long long ones.

When there are multiple async scenes going on, who I pose to ‘next’ has nothing to do with how much I like the person and everything to do with how much I need to think. The scene where I’m giving my opinions on Plato’s Cave is going to be a slower pose than the scene where I’m eating cake.

3+ person async is death to me. This kills the frog.

Overall, I really like the things async lets me do (pause, RP with people in other timezones, meet new people) but for the most part if my async partner offered me async or real time, I’d choose real time without much question.

[tsar]

I used to be a real die hard live scene RPer. I didn’t enjoy async, I didn’t want to see async, I didn’t want to LOOK IN ITS EYES.

Then I got a job where I’m up super early and even on the nights where I could stay up late, I’m spending that time with my family because I see less of them during the week. I have time, but the time is weird and not often all in one place except on my days off. And not everyone is available to play at 10:30 AM EST lol.

So, now I’ve been doing a lot of async and it’s not bad. It sure as hell beats having to leave the hobby entirely while my life is this way.

[Jenn]

@Pavel said in MU Peeves Thread:

[KDraygo]

I’m definitely one of those who are guilty of not being more disciplined with my Async scenes, which I need to fix on my end. I used to be an avid live scene RPer when I first started MUSHing but back then, I had a lot more free time to dedicate to RP and the people I RP with were also mostly in the same time zone and same time slots with free time. Now, RL is a bigger obstacle which is a shame, which is also why it’s impossible for me to play on more than one game.

Things have changed a lot with technology and also how life has changed for people. My free RL time has reduced and instead of hashing out a scene in four hours, I’m mostly down to two hours on a week night where I can fully focus. Oddly enough, even before Ares, I’ve had really great scenes with fun RPers where we can pause the scene after one night and pick up the next night. Or, even before Ares, I’ve done async (before it was coined Async) where the log was copied to google docs and continued there before the log is posted on the wikidot site for the game.

This is where my personal discipline needs to be tightened up on my end, where if a good scene has to be paused, instead of going fully async, it may be better to continue with a continued live scene on the second day. Async is definitely much harder when more people are in a scene, because everyone’s schedule is fragmented and it is much harder to line up the timing. That is why I try to reserve async to one on one scenes or plot advancing scenes so everyone has a chance to contribute to progression of the plot when they can. That’s one of the strong points of async it allows more people to participate instead of people not being in the same timezone of the majority being left out.

In the end, there are strong pros and cons to async, the challenge is to properly juggle it so it works out for those involved.

[JLo]

I’ve been relying on Async RP a lot in the last year. And I’m glad for all the people who’ve put up with the stop-and-go pace of my life. Their RP has been super valuable to me. And the odd public or group scene that I’ve actually been able to make have been like pit stops on the way.

But there are definitely limits to the format. One of which, is group scenes. Gathering disparate people on competing schedules and differing time zones into the same virtual room at the same time can be like catching lightning in a bottle. But passing a pose baton between those same few people whenever works is more like powering a house party with infrequent bolts of static electricity.

So, it’s totally not a replacement for traditional pacing. But it is a huge relief when it’s all that I have time for. I do keep other peoples’ tastes in mind though and don’t tend to reach out, answer requests, or cold call for RP as much as I otherwise would. Because, while asking for RP can be awkward in general, asking with the caveat of ‘hey - I just met you, would you like to RP in a private scene with me over the course of several days?’ feels a little extra.

[L. B. Heuschkel]

I prefer live scenes where the immersion is 110% and the speed is breakneck for four hours straight. It’s just – health, age, and real-life geography make that pretty much a utopic fantasy most of the time. Sounds like I’m not the only one, either.

So to me, Async (and Glacial, the ultra-slow asyncs) is the lifesaver – I can do those or I can step away entirely. I balked some at first, I’ll admit – but I have also come to appreciate, as a writer, that having more time sometimes also means being able to provide a more interesting narrative.

I advise against large asyncs, though. Passing the speaker token around between six people like that is… well, little short of torture. Three to four seems to work, with room for an extra if enough of the three to four are faster.

[Jenn]

@L-B-Heuschkel
For large asynch scenes, I’ve found really great luck with 6-8 people in them if it has a GM or ST involved. I use the layout of 1-2 GM poses per day, every 12 or 24 hours. In between each GM pose, every other player is allowed 1-2 poses in any order they want to do so in between. People know to check in either once or twice a day as pre-agreed and no one has to wait to post for ‘their turns’ and can do it at their own conveniences in between each story move forward via scene runner.

[heysparky]

I love async as someone who struggles in live scenes - especially large scenes or scenes with ‘stakes’ like combat, or STed stuff, time limits and Important Story Things.

I recently asked someone for advice on how to deal with those types of scenes and was sorta embarrassed to do so in the first place and then doubly so when the response was ‘I don’t really struggle with those, can’t help, sorry (paraphrase, and they were very nice)’ and was like … augh, I know it’s not just me, but it’s meeeeee. >_<

SO. Async

Getting new poses in async is like an advent calendar! Checking for poses is part of my routine. Love async. Didn’t love it before Ares. Ares makes async so easy (which may be part of the rise of these types of scenes as the Ares community adopts them).

[Gashlycrumb]

@Floof said in MU Peeves Thread:

I’ve been trying to just be like fuck it guess I’ll just be awful then! But it’s SO HARD.

Cheering you on. This is why my mother wrote “Anything worth doing is worth doing badly,” on her piano.

It’s irritating that “It’s only a game,” so often comes up in the context of, “You’re wrong to have hurt feelings about it,” but seldom in the context of, “Relax, you’re allowed to suck, it’s not your Ph.D. dissertation.”

Play for fun. With typoes, grammatical errors, and another beer if you want. You don’t have to impress people. I’ve had a lot of fun with people whose characters have orbs. Some of them have even been limpid pools. I’ve had fun with players who have limited English vocabularies and used me as a thesarus. I’ve had fun with players who regularly fall asleep at the keys. I’ve had fun with players who are emergency services workers and just dissapeared mid-scene.

And also, give people a break. Don’t dismiss them as sucky just because they don’t impress you the first time you see them. Let people enjoy the hobby instead of feeling like they shouldn’t show up if they’re not at the top of their game that day.

Also, people. You don’t suck. I’ve been playing these silly things since, uh, 1994 and I have yet to meet a MUer who could not write bestselling novels for John “See Jack Litigate. Litigate, Jack, Litigate” Grisham if they’d just get paid enough to try. I have RPed on MUs with Jim Butcher and Neil Gaiman and neither of them developed the gushy “they’re just the best RPer” groupies that your average staff-alt gathers. Hell, Gaiman essentially said it was too hard.