MU Peeves Thread
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@Snackness I chalk a lot of it up to ‘burn out’ and ‘rl fucking sucks for a lot of people right now’. I tend to assume that people just don’t always have the oomph to try and snag randos, or they have the energy to hop on and chill, but not necessarily rp.
It can definitely make being pro-active feel more like a chore or depressing, but on the other side of the coin… everything is so hard right now. I feel like adding ‘pressure to perform’ is apt to make it worse, not better. I’ve gotten to where I toss out lil hits of xp when I see people out and rping to try and encourage that and reward the effort - cause sometimes it’s an effort to go out and find a place and make a scene happen.
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I do think that there’s been a shift in the game cultures I’m used to (in the sense that on many games people just don’t hang out on grid hoping for someone to come join them, which is how I found the majority of my let’s meet someone new play before.) But I do think it’s a little change in me too, where if I wait around too long and nobody seems to want to jump in, I’ll drift out a lot more quickly because of how it makes me feel. I don’t have the emotional tolerance to wait before worry sets in for as long as I used to. Which definitely cuts down on the opportunities, because I know that usually eventually at least one person will respond, if I can wait it out long enough.
It’s a little weird because mushing/RPing really is a mood elevator for me (no matter what kind it is really). I think that’s largely because I am what I would call a quiet extrovert (I don’t like being the life of the party RL, but do best when I get to be around a variety of people and that’s a good way to recharge for me). Due to covid and a few other things my volunteering has gone from a significant part of my life to pretty much almost zip. MUSHing can be a great outlet because it combines two things I adore (writing/storytelling AND other people)! And it’s usually one of the last things I “drop” due to stress (if I’m failing to log in/totally don’t want to think about or do RP/MUSHing it means I’m just not in a great place if it’s gotten SO bad that I don’t want to do that) rather than one of the first things I clear from my plate. But everything’s a little more fragile now, I think. Not in a psycho way, but just I don’t now how to describe it–just not wanting to add onto other people’s stress levels, and my own being frayed, and I think so many people are kind of right along in that groove now too.
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@Taika It’s in these situations that I really appreciate Ares ability to have asynchronous scenes.
Yes, I know it’s not everyone’s thing, but it’s helped me out a lot to be able to have scenes but not always the time. I sneak too many poses in at my workstation.
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I 100 percent have been feeling this and have had a very hard time adjusting.
My old MO was to hang out on a public grid til somebody wandered by. Sometimes they were interesting, sometimes not.
I’ve realized I’m just absolute dogshit at asking people for RP
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@Snackness Pick-up RP is my preferred (only?) way to RP*, but I haven’t been RPing lately. Living and working through a pandemic takes 98% of my brainpower and energy every day, and I just don’t have it in me to log on and look around for a scene. I keep hoping one day I’ll have the energy again, but nothing yet. So maybe it’s possible there are more of us than it seems like, at the moment?
*I have too much other stuff in my life to make RP a priority, so it fits in around everything else, whenever that happens to be. I can’t rearrange other things around RP, RP has to rearrange around the other things.
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Almost every day I have moments when I really want to rp and then something happens to just suck all my energy out of me. I did some random pickup rp the other day because I had time and a player I rarely catch due to timezones was out in public and it felt like the first time in a hundred years. And it’s hard to actually carry a plot or character thread through when that’s how your rp is, y’know?
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I feel like I’m becoming more exclusive about my RP and I kind of hate it, because I feel like I used to gain energy by throwing myself out there. But I’m also so god damn tired lately. I don’t know where the energy is supposed to come from.
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@tsar Youth. That’s where it used to come from.
We old now.
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Not just youth. Also standards.
When I was 25 and had all night and nothing to compare with, I would jump into anything. Even the most atrocious, brain-numbing roleplay was good roleplay.
Now I’m 51 and I don’t have all night and I’m not going to waste time and energy on stuff that’s boring the hell out of me while hoping that a miracle happens.
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@L-B-Heuschkel So what you’re saying is that RP is like sex.
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@L-B-Heuschkel This is mostly why I’ve moved to running plots instead of playing. This way I can RP about what I find interesting, and maybe others will too. To me, it’s a more constructive use of my time.
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@Sammich said in MU Peeves Thread:
@L-B-Heuschkel So what you’re saying is that RP is like sex.
I mean, if you’re like me and love the sound of your own voice…
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@Testament said in MU Peeves Thread:
@L-B-Heuschkel This is mostly why I’ve moved to running plots instead of playing. This way I can RP about what I find interesting, and maybe others will too. To me, it’s a more constructive use of my time.
Also, agreed. A substantial majority of scenes I am in I am either GMing or they’re the follow-ups to scenes I have GMed. And I like it that way.
It gives me narrative control to make certain that the topic at hand is one that’s interesting to me. Or that at least the people involved are. -
Public games that still in the year of our lord 2022 are run by people who really only want to play with their friends and everyone else is meant to be supporting/background characters so their friends can be badasses. We are basically all middle-aged adults now. If you just want to run shit for your friends to be cool, run a private game.
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@foksthery Have you asked staff for a bigger role and been denied? I realize it’s a peeve thread, but my experience as a staffer is that people ASSUME staff friends are getting all the good bits because they’re staff friends when in reality…
They’re friends with staff because they talk to them, coordinate with them, and ask what they can do to get involved.
Some staff do just suck. In the year of our lord 2022, however, some also are just answering the people who ask, friends or otherwise.
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Or put in jobs or showed up to random call scenes? If people don’t put in jobs about things, I wind up kind of assuming those people aren’t that interested in getting involved with whatever is going on. I’m finding that it seems to be the same usual suspects doing the legwork.
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@foksthery said in MU Peeves Thread:
Public games that still in the year of our lord 2022 are…
The only thing that has advanced significantly past the stage of infancy despite decades of MU existence is the code used to run games. Everything else is very nearly the same as it was decades ago. Same problems. Same issues. Repeat MU after MU.
In some cases, you can watch the mistakes happen in real time as the inevitability of decades of experiences blows by game runners who think they are immune to the same basic pitfalls that befall every game.
Many don’t learn from the mistakes of the past. A lot of that has to do with the lack of transparency in running games that most places have. So people starting up new games are basically starting from scratch, save for the code, for which several people have been very diligent in documentation and transparency.
But otherwise, expect the same old dumbness in game running to keep repeating.
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@KarmaBum This game in question has been reduced to two staffers and their favorites and mostly everyone else has been driven off. These staffers try to micromanage the RP of everyone who isn’t in their circles, and will intentionally run scenes so that their buddies get all the cool moments while everyone else watches.
Put in jobs and have a plan that you’ve worked on in scenes? Get told in the GMed scenes that your plans aren’t going to happen and you’re gonna take the plot on rails that you’re given and you’re going to like it.
There are some good people on this game, but if you’re not buddies with staff, all you’re going to get are social scenes and the stories you create… which you might get told to stop telling because it draws attention away from the people staff deem are important.
I’m glad they’re having their fun, but like, why waste other people’s time? I know I stopped wasting mine.
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I just realized I lost my link to the log of the Gunpoint Guest story at least one computer ago, maybe two. Dang. That was a heck of a ride.
