@Pyrephox said in When is the last time you played?:
No OOCly hidden lore.
This is the one part i struggle with, mostly because i’m not sure how to make the lore 100% accessible without people feeling … I don’t know, like they know the whole story so why would they need to play I guess? But hm. Things to think about!
@catzilla said in When is the last time you played?:
run a silly one shot that will (probably) not have an effect on the setting.
so, curious, how could a game get you to run a plot that could have an effect on the setting, affect the metaplot or change the world in some sort of way? Is it just as simple as keeping that “You can do whatever you want here as long as it doesn’t break the world” on the tin or would you need something else?
@Yam idk. sometimes I think we just as a community need to stop expecting one person to hold all the story on their shoulders. Maybe a lot more people would build games if they thought that the community would tell stories with them instead of them having to tell stories for everyone? I’ve thought about that a lot. I mean I’d love to run a game and have 10,000 ideas, but I don’t have the dedicated story teller time.
@ham said in When is the last time you played?:
We’ve all seen the “waves” come and go, and honestly it comes down to the fact that a large amount of folks don’t take initiative to engage beyond “oh hey this is new and everyone’s here.” The amount of fun we have on these games is really pretty largely up to us, and it doesn’t require newness or hotness. It requires effort.
I do wonder what everyone is waiting for, really. Like we’ve had in however many years since Arx ended multiple L&L games, fantasy games, supernatural games, steampunk games, WoD games, and they either don’t pop off or it does pop off and then the activity plummets and the game dies. And games die for many reasons but I think a big one is what you said - people don’t take initiative to engage, and everyone just keeps waiting on someone else to Do Something, and when everyone is waiting around, no one does anything, and the staff can’t keep up with constant demands to Do Stuff so they get burned out and yeah.
I think we wear rose coloured glasses a lot of the time on MU*s that are pretty nostalgic and are waiting for that “spark” again. But I don’t think it’s the games itself? I miss the times where I played with my friends, and there’s just not a lot of places where my friends play anymore, and even if there was a game that was EXACTLY LIKE the game that I played before that I loved … I don’t think I’d stick. I’m not the same person I was even a year ago, and I just don’t have the energy or the time, and the time I do have I want to spend doing other things.
I just don’t think it has to do with the games that are available or the games that I used to play. Like there could be a carbon copy of the games I loved and everything could be the same but I am not the same anymore. If that makes sense.
I’ve been struggling with my current job for awhile as they did not follow through with multiple promises and my role wasn’t what I was hired for even after almost three years. The place was becoming rapidly toxic with gossiping HR ladies, constant financial woes, and some other matters that were making me concerned. But I finally resigned! My new role seems promising, it’s where I realistically should be in my career, and they seem to have their shit together. I’m really excited, and just so happy to finally be free of this place … in two weeks 
RL Peeve: they are making me stay TWO WHOLE WEEKS after resigning and are being real dicks about it. But at least it’s temporary!
time to rewatch Repo! The Genetic Opera in his honor.
what is even going on? lol what game are we talking about
I don’t know if “yes and” is the default of most MUSH players but it certainly is the default in my own play style and the play style of those I actively enjoy playing with. There are many people who will just respond to the prompt and offer nothing in return. When I play, I choose to play with people I can riff off of and will riff back, and I enjoy the whacky shenanigans we get into by expanding on one another’s poses.
More on topic, I find people who are willing to ‘yes and’ are less likely to be a My Guy, because they aren’t really trying to be the main character all the time but truly enjoy having fun with other people and just want to play.
Anymore, I like games that offer the quickest avenue to RPing out on the grid. Whether that’s allowing a bullet point background, or offering roster characters that you don’t have to write applications for, or whatever that is - I think it’s important to get people out there and playing vs locked up in chargen for days on end while they are busy working on their 3 paragraph note to try and justify having 3 dots in sportsball that isn’t even going to really come up or offer any sort of mechanical benefit anyway.
I don’t think that application processes stop the worst offenders from coming onto your games. You’ll weed out the trolls (probably) and the characters that don’t fit your game (likely) but the true creeps will look good on paper and not show themselves until they’ve already infiltrated the community.
For roster games, I don’t know how valuable it is to have people write several paragraphs about why they want to take the character and what they want to do with them. Sometimes people don’t really know until they’ve played the character a few times. Sometimes they are BRAND NEW to the game and really, really don’t know whatsoever, they just thought this specific roster looked cool and want to give it a go. The only time I think it’s valuable to apply to a character is if the character could be in high demand and it wouldn’t be fair to give it to someone on a first come, first serve basis, but even then, I think there should be multiple characters like that so there’s enough to go around, I guess.
@Roadspike said in "My Guy Syndrome":
I often like to think, “No, normally my character wouldn’t be caught dead in that biker bar where the RP is happening, so why is my character there?”
I’m going to push back a little here. I generally am the kind of person who will always come up with a reason why my character is in XYZ place even if they don’t “belong”, but I also do my very best to know my place and try and decide if my presence in that scene is going to add to it. So if in your example the RP is happening in the biker bar, and the RP is happening because a gang of bikers is having a scene for their faction, and you are not in the faction, does your character add value to the scene? I have seen so many faction events have some random person inserted into it and they suddenly become the Main Character of all the events even though they don’t belong in the faction and have many other factions they can be part of. It’s frustrating as person IN that faction that gets sidelined.
So just … I guess, it’s okay to join the biker scene even if you aren’t a biker, but maybe just ask yourself if you add value by being there.
There’s nothing inherently wrong about playing your character the way you wrote your character. It’s when you use the “My Guy” excuse to be a dick or a roadblock to other people that it becomes an issue.
That being said your characters “don’t just write themselves” and I do think you have to be consciously aware if your decisions would make for good RP. Likewise I think we have to do a better job as a community of just saying no sometimes. If you’re a game runner and you’ve made your spaceship game and want all the characters on the spaceship game to leave the spaceship and explore, it’s OK to say no to the character that’s being chargen’d to avoid exploring.
@MisterBoring said in Numetal/Retromux:
I believe that inappropriate amount of time is subjective. What one person sees as inappropriate is appropriate to another.
Okie dokie artichokie.
@MisterBoring said in Numetal/Retromux:
@bear_necessities said in Numetal/Retromux:
But also if 1-2 hours spent on an application is considered minimal effort and not good enough for a game then woof, probably better to move on. We all have lives, right? RIGHT?!
That really depends on what the 1-2 hours produced. I’ve ran into players who take 2 hours to write two unintelligible sentences in a pose, so it’s feasible that what was written, even though it took 2 hours, was awful.
Amount of Time != Quality
I don’t disagree but also it is very very very clear from the wording of that post that there’s an expectation that an inappropriate amount of time is spent on applications. Blood, sweat and tears! Let’s normalize not blooding, sweating or tearing over game apps.
@Artifact said in Numetal/Retromux:
@MisterBoring The ban was posted publicly:
lol “we wouldn’t be here if not for the blood, sweat and tears of the community!!” is a lot of a statement. But also if 1-2 hours spent on an application is considered minimal effort and not good enough for a game then woof, probably better to move on. We all have lives, right? RIGHT?!
Not in defense of Wikiwhatever cuz he reads like a Real Problem and I’d ban him too for just being exhausting, but man. Can we normalize not blood, sweat and tearing over a game?
@Jumpscare That has nothing to do with these people playing pacifists. It sounds like you have some jerk players. But there are jerk pacifists and there are jerk combatants and there are jerk everythings. It’s not a pacifist thing.
@Jumpscare Makes sense, thanks. I think you should’ve included that detail in your scenario above to paint a clearer picture of what was happening.
But idk man. At the end of the day, people aren’t assholes for using in-game mechanics to create a story, so if it had ended like Jumpscare initially said it did? I don’t see the issue. The issue is when people take it way too far, cross a line, and act like dicks because they can’t take the L and move the fuck on.
@Jumpscare said in Non-toxic PvP:
MacGuffin Holder: It’s time for me to bring the MacGuffin to the danger pit.
Problematic Pacifist: That’s a bad idea. You should take it to the safety pit where my faction wants it to be.
MH: I’ve been vocal about my plans to do this for the past week.
PP: And my protests have gone ignored.
I think this is the real issue, and I honestly do not understand why you would ban PP in this situation. You have two characters who are fundamentally opposed about something, MH is hoarding the item and soley determining where it goes, PP offered an alternative and was ignored. It resulted in IC conflict. The fact that PP stood there and took it, and then snarked about it afterward, is IC. Unless there was bleed and MH was being harassed OOC? There shouldn’t have been a banning.
But also, why can’t there be a conflict? Why can’t two people disagree about what to do about a thing? Would this have been better had PP fought MH? Why did this result in an OOC banning, when it was an IC conflict, and story was created? Why did MH run to staff and win after ignoring PP entirely in the first place? Imma be honest, this story paints MH in a worse light than PP.
I think we’ve maybe gotten way too gunshy as a community. I’ve seen far too many games recently where any sort of conflict over the plot, no matter how small, results in immediate shutdown, both ICly and OOCly. Usually the vocal majority wins, and the one or two people who disagree or want to go at the plot another way either a) get ignored AT BEST, or b) don’t want to ‘rock the boat’ so they don’t say anything at all. That isn’t really about PvP - I don’t play on PvP games so my experiences are entirely on PvE - it’s just about how we treat conflict overall.
What does “100% OOC transparency” look like in this kind of game?
