Today’s peeve is:

If you have played somewhere for years and you’re not happy with it anymore, by all means, I will listen to you vent. I get it.

If you just joined a game and all you want to do is bitch about it…

maybe…

simply do not play there?

In this the year of our lord 2025, why are people still allowing bad actors in their game community? Why is there a concern with “we have to be fair” to people who are toxic to staff and other players, totally obnoxious, or otherwise a bad fit? It’s a mush, not a constitutional right, if they’re no good for the community then EVICT THEM.

Today someone AMBUSHED ME (idk if you’re on the forums but you know who you are if you read this) with a link to a website for a game I played around 2012-2018. It was run by a head wiz who became a close IRL friend and who passed away in 2019. I had no idea the site was even still up.

What a kick in the feels. All the old logs are there, and our snapshots of funny ooc moments, and our pictures and playlists. There are lots of captures of jokes and stories and fun moments of my friend who’s no longer with us, and other friends as well, some I still talk to, some I don’t.

I am so grateful and I am so sad. MUSH is such a strange medium in the way it can feel so all-encompassing at the time, and then enough time goes by and it’s just a little snapshot of how things were, and who you were then, and all the fun times you had writing stories with other people way too late into the night.

Really, really grateful and sad.

If it helps people orient themselves in the scene and approach others, IDGAF about walking in and introductions.

What I hate is when I set and then the person poses in and doesn’t interact with me. Get the fuck out with that what are you even here in this scene for, why did I set for you, stop being the worst.

The facts are what they are and they’re never going to change. It’s a Star Wars game! They’re doing stuff. Some is ok. Some is really stupid. The good guys and/or bad guys have the upper hand this week. There’s some spaceships and some guns. If you are unlucky enough to have an issue with someone, especially a harassment issue, no one will help you.

That’s the only thing to say about this place. It does not matter what the theme posts are. It never did. I think it’s ok if we don’t give them free publicity for every single bbpost.

@Cobalt here you go

If someone says “we should RP sometime” and you actually do want to RP with them, a good response is “sounds great, what day next week works for you?”

If you just answer “we should rp sometime” with “yeah, we should!” then everyone’s going to explode into a pile of brainweasels and never get the scene going. Somebody has to ask, somebody has to pick a time, effort.

I feel like the gist here is “Social rp is fine if it doesn’t suck” which… I mean yeah, that’s true of any form of rp, isn’t it?

I feel like this sums up several many MUSH interactions I’ve had with people over the years

If you sign up for something

Go to it

Or tell someone you aren’t going to it

Fucks sake

@howyadoin I don’t think this works for the context @Yam mentioned, though, which is why I wanted to have the discussion in a purely MUSH context.

I think in MUSH we see a lot of things like:

• I’m not leaving the spaceship to go walk on the planet we’re visiting, my guy wouldn’t think it’s safe.
• Sorry for making this social scene awkward with both of us here, but my guy wouldn’t forgive their grudge against your guy.
• I won’t RP where you suggested. My guy wouldn’t go to that side of town.
• Sorry for disrupting this town meeting, but it’s what my guy would do.
• My guy already knows that information so I’m not interested in RPing passing it on to others.
• I wish I could RP but my guy wouldn’t go out in this weather.
• I can’t help you. My guy wouldn’t find that interesting.
• Sorry I hurt your feelings with the way I acted IC. It’s what my guy would do.

etc etc etc

Many of the times we run into this, there might not even be a GM involved to say “are you sure” and the actions they’re doing aren’t inherently absurd. The My-Guyer’s actions might even be sensible. Sure, that planet we’re visiting does look dangerous.

As a GM you can definitely say “fine, stay with the ship then, guess you aren’t playing in this event” and as a player you can say things like “well you pick somewhere to RP then,” but the bad vibes are already there at that point. Other people are uncomfortable. Most players don’t want to leave the My-Guy person out. Most My-Guy’ers know that.

My-Guy people disrupt a feeling of collaboration and buy-in that is pretty fundamental to the improv we depend on in this medium. That’s what the top guy in the link is talking about: he got his way, the other players agreed, it was all very “in-character,” and it still felt bad.

https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/37103/what-is-my-guy-syndrome-and-how-do-i-handle-it

Interesting Q&A from 12 years ago that still seems to apply. What do you think about “my guy syndrome” and handling it, in a MUSH and not LARP or Tabletop context?

@Pavel said in Numetal/Retromux:

It’s really no better nor worse than any other genre, there’s shitfuckery everywhere.

I don’t know that I agree with this.

I’ve played plenty of oWOD, many many years of it, though never nWOD or the other newer iterations, so, speaking from that perspective. This system was never meant to be in a MUSH format. What was supposed to be “a cadre of me and my buddies fighting overwhelming forces of corruption and monstrosity working against us” at a table becomes, on a MUSH, other groups of buddies in the role of the forces working against you. WOD was never designed for vampire and werewolf at the same table, much less Mage and everything else.

It’s not balanced for it. So what you’ve ended up with is this really problematic soup of theme that hasn’t aged well, players in thematic opposition to each other, and rules/structures that aren’t balanced between spheres and require interpretation, and a ton of spheres that have to be supported, all against a backdrop in which “the world is gritty and dark” is used by some players as an excuse for very toxic behavior.

I still like oWOD. Love to play an Ananasi someday, somewhere. I’m not saying WOD games can’t be good or fun, but I do think it takes an extremely firm hand and clear head at the wheel to make them so. While there is shitfuckery everywhere, unfucking the shit is a more uphill battle in WOD than elsewhere.

In my opinion, anyway.

@Ominous What keeps you around on the forum in the sections about RP habits and practices?

WOD players are you guys okay??

@Faraday said in When is the last time you played?:

The possibly vain hope that someday life will settle down enough that I actually have the time and spoons to play again.

What would you want to play, if those conditions were achieved?

@Roz You aren’t even in the several years category GET OUT OF HERE lolol

For those who haven’t RP’d in several years, what keeps you checking in/weighing in on the forum? I’m referring here to the forum parts specifically about MUSHing and RP, not the social/ooc parts like RL support, pets, books, dead people, etc.