@Pyrephox said in Paid Role-Playing:

In practice, though, it would raise my standards for what I expected in return to the point where I’d want a professional product, as opposed to the hobbyist arrangements we have now.

This is exactly why I would be uncomfortable making any kind of “pay to play” mechanism. It’s one thing to ask people to chip in for the collective costs of something they’re using. In RL, a club that needs to rent a venue might ask members to chip in to cover those costs. Likewise, I see nothing wrong with a MU having a tip jar or something for folks to help defray the server costs. But as soon as you start charging more than the costs, you’ve turned it from a community club into a profit-making venture, and that just feels different.

There have been lots of awesome scenes over the years, but I think the one that stands out the most is the finale of Battlestar Pacifica. It was an epic three-pronged final battle that paid off a bunch of story threads. Really proud of how it all turned turned out. It was nice to have a game go out with a bang instead of just petering out as MUs tend to do.

Blowing up the namesake ship was kinda bittersweet though:

As the fleet begins to stand down from Condition One, the damage control officer calls over for Starr’s attention. “Sir - the mains are drifting into the red. We have massive decompressions along frames 122-200 -” He points to the board. “Fires and structural damage are hampering damage control efforts in the starboard flight pod.”

Starr eyes the board with a grim frown. “You’re saying we could lose the ship.”

The officer replies back, in a low voice. “Sir, I’m saying we already have. It’s just a matter of time.”

Starr stares at the board for another long moment, before she finally nods. She picks up the handset again. “Attention all hands. This is the commander. Execute emergency evacuation procedures. Launch all Vipers and Raptors. Salvage critical material where you can and report to the escape pods.” There’s a sad tone to her voice when she says with finality, “Abandon ship.”

@Yam There was definitely monetization via the book sales, but I thought there was also some kind of more direct payment too. Some kind of character perks you could buy? I might be mixing up games, but I know it was a thing somebody tried once.

I think the more freeform story-driven RP experience is too subjective to work well as a paid endeavor. I shudder to imagine “pay to win” applied to storytelling.

That said, I’m pretty sure there were some monetized games in the early 90s that were more RP-oriented. Maybe they were closer to RPIs. I think Otherspace had some things you could pay for? Or maybe it was just a patreon style tip jar? It’s been forever, and I was only there briefly, so apologies if I’m misremembering.

@Third-Eye said in Brainstorming Game Ideas:

The only thing that will motivate someone to create and put the hard work into starting a game long-term is to build what YOU want, to some degree with no eye toward whether it might be popular or not. That doesn’t mean ignoring advice, though frankly sometimes it does.

This. Also you’d maybe be surprised how much fun you can have with a handful of really passionate players.

@Yam said in Web-based CharGen or in-game CharGen:

I’ve often wondered how much applications actually filter anything.

Apps for me are more about filtering out players who don’t understand the theme. I can’t count the number of times that the app process has blocked an “oh heck to the no” type of character. And games without apps have led to some pretty forehead-slapping retcons.

This is harder to do with roster chars because the backstory is already written for them. Those “job interview” type apps have always icked me out as a player, so I’ve never wanted to do them as staff.

@Pavel said in Web-based CharGen or in-game CharGen:

Faraday and Cobalt. Next question.

Aw thanks.

@Yam said in Web-based CharGen or in-game CharGen:

This extremely social hobby requires you to understand nuance in text, requires you to be able to read the room, requires you to take queues gracefully, requires you to be able to put yourself in another person’s shoes, and generally requires you to be GOOD at other human beings, which is actually kind of hard and involves actual work! COMMENCE FIGHT.

I don’t disagree with any of that, but I’m not following how that’s related to web vs client chargen?

I don’t think you can generalize that much. It’s going to vary greatly by game and skill of the coder.

In Ares for example, I think the FS3 web chargen is much easier to use than the in-game one. But if you’re a player who prefers client over web, that isn’t going to matter. Or if you have a visual impairment, you may find a client-based chargen easier no matter how nice the web one is. Some chargen systems are going to be nighmarishly complex on web. etc.

@KDraygo said in Bad Stuff Happening IC:

@MisterBoring Horror MU was like this when I played it, PCs will die or be maimed. Bad things will happen. Was quite a bit of fun.

Same with TGG. It can be fun when people go in knowing what they’re signing up for.

@hellfrog said in Other People:

I have fielded dozens of ‘why don’t more people want to rp with me’ type questions. I have never fielded "I am not having fun, how can I have fun?’

I mean, I’ve fielded plenty of the latter and fewer of the former. YMMV of course.

@Yam said in Other People:

ALSO, setting OTHER characters up to kick some ass and shine.

This. As a staffer, my main goal is to enable other players to have their Big Darn Hero moments. Among friends, it’s more about being willing to play supporting character to their stories. Sometimes it falls short, but that’s what I strive for.

@Pavel said in Bad Stuff Happening IC:

As far as this discussion is concerned, I don’t view “having an emotional reaction” as being bleed. That’s the intended purpose. You’re supposed to have an emotional reaction to RP, that’s the whole point.

Yeah, that’s how I view it as well. Having an emotional reaction to fiction is perfectly normal. Even outsized reactions can be healthy if handled responsibly IMHO. “Bleed”, to me, is something else. It’s a crossing of boundaries that’s more than just the simple emotional response. That said, I acknowledge there is not one universal definition. But if we’re going to make proclamations about whether bleed is problematic, it’s helpful to know if we’re talking about the same thing.

@Roz I agree we’re mostly on the same page. I think I was just viewing bleed as a specific type of maladaptive behavior where one over-identifies with the character. Self-insert gone awry. The classic example being: two characters are in love and one player starts letting that bleed over to their behavior toward the other player.

That feels very different from, say, ragequitting and throwing your controller across the room after losing a Fortnite match. That’s also unhealthy, obviously, but I personally wouldn’t call it bleed.

The kind of bleed I’m describing feels closer to the parasocial relationships you see towards influencers.

I dunno, maybe they’re all just different sides of the same coin and I’m trying to make an unnecessary distinction.

@Roz said in Bad Stuff Happening IC:

I think bleed — by which I just mean having an emotional response to RP or IC events that is bad enough to feel harmful or maladaptive in some fashion, stuff that goes beyond the standard sort of emotional reaction you’d have to fiction – is incredibly common. Like, the vast majority of RPers will experience it in some fashion at one point or another.

That’s an interesting perspective. I’m not sure that I define “bleed” the same way, because I think the line between “standard sort of emotional reaction to fiction” and “maladaptive” is not well-defined.

People have emotional responses to fiction. People have emotional responses to gaming. It’s natural that someone is going to have emotional responses to fiction-gaming. I don’t personally call that “bleed”.

Bleed to me is when you fail to keep a healthy boundary between you and the character. Like when I cry at Titanic, it’s not because I think I’m Rose. It’s not because I’m over-empathizing with the character, or her emotions are bleeding into mine. It’s just a tragic story. Whereas I see bleed as transferring the character’s emotions onto your own to an unhealthy degree.

@Pavel said in Bad Stuff Happening IC:

Bleed, to my mind, is usually accidental

I guess it depends on your definition. If ink bleeds through paper, it could be because you tried to put something under it but it wasn’t enough, but it could also be that you didn’t even try at all (through innocent ignorance or recklessness). Either way the effect is the same.

That said, I agree with your basic premise that a concerning number of RPers don’t seem to believe that preventing bleed is even important/valuable in the first place.

@Ashkuri said in Bad Stuff Happening IC:

Interesting to me that no one (yet) voted for “Yes but only physical peril, not social.” Social to me covers the like

@Yam said in Bad Stuff Happening IC:

someone’s gonna’ post a proclamation the next morning LORD EIRAN, LAYABOUT OF THE LAURENTS, SEEN BEING AN UNMARRIAGEABLE IDIOT

that kind of thing. I would consider that a Social Bad Thing for a person to encounter.

One thing I find interesting is that other people tend to transfer IC humiliation onto the humiliated player. Like I had one character who was constantly screwing up (by design), and a non-trivial number of players acted like I was the idiot. It was very puzzling. I don’t know if it was just so alien to them that someone would willingly set their own character up for humiliation, or if they just genuinely thought I was dumb because my character did something stupid or what. But it wasn’t a particularly fun experience.

@Third-Eye said in Bad Stuff Happening IC:

@Roz said in Bad Stuff Happening IC:

I answered “if I have control over it” which isn’t EXACTLY right, I don’t want to be needing to dictate the details. But it’s moreso a level of – understanding the risk I’m getting into, and also that I definitely trust some GMs more than others.

This was both how I voted and I feel. I wax nostalgic about The Greatest Generation MUSH a lot and all my characters dying, but that was only fun because of how OOCly clear the risks going in were.

Yeah that’s pretty much how I land also. When my PC got blown up unexpectedly on TGG, it was annoying, but I couldn’t complain because I knew what I was signing up for. When my PC got accidentally spaced on SW3, it was way more annoying because that level of “die due to one bad die roll” wasn’t expected.

I generally welcome any IC drama that isn’t character-ending, but I prefer it to be collaborative. I care about story, and setbacks are important, but it’s also a game. There’s a middle ground.

@somasatori said in AI In Poses:

I am apparently in Reviewer #2 brain these days whenever I look at any research work.

I’m right there with you. I literally did a whole homeschool lesson with my kids on that whitepaper, showing how to think critically about the potential biases and how the company frames the results.

Anyway, I didn’t dive too deep into the underlying studies themselves, focusing on the meta-analysis part. @Trashcan was right to point out that some of them were pretty dated.

@somasatori said in AI In Poses:

while I’m not disputing that Originality.ai is good as I’ve never used it, this is the same vibe as “we have investigated ourselves and found that we’re the best”

Good to be skeptical, but I don’t think it’s quite that bad. More like “5 out of 6 doctors agree!” advertising. It is a meta-analysis of studies that (as far as I can tell) were done by other people. There are still a host of potential biases in play. My general point was that even with all those potential biases, they’re still admitting that sometimes they’re only getting a “B”.

@MisterBoring said in AI In Poses:

“I don’t want to RP with GenAI because I’m here to RP with real people.”

This. But also: “I think GenAI is terrible and I don’t want to have anything to do with it. I especially don’t want my poses fed into their plagiarism machine.”

I don’t really care how good it is. Even if they fixed every single one of its flaws and it was a better RPer than everyone else I’d ever played with, I still wouldn’t want to play with someone using it.

@Pavel said in AI In Poses:

@somasatori Or even if you do recognise those as “problems,” it reads more like the typical wannabe Wordsworth or Hemingway crap that I attempt whenever I get too big for my britches.

Yeah exactly. When I ran some old “overdramatically wordsmithy” poses through the AI checkers, it flagged those too. I just question their methodology.

@Trashcan said in AI In Poses:

Not a huge sample size, of course, but I thought it was interesting.

That is interesting, thanks for sharing.

And look, even as a skeptic I’m not saying that the AI checkers don’t work at all. That’s clearly not the case. But I did find this interesting whitepaper from Originality.AI. A couple things that stood out to me:

1. No single tool was the best in every study, and there was significant variance in tool performance across studies. This suggests that the effectiveness of these tools may vary greatly by how you’re using it. (which isn’t great if you want something reliable)

2. Even the tool that’s claiming it’s the best only got a B+ in a couple of the studies. Maybe that’s good enough for some purposes, but it gives me pause.