@Roadspike said in Staff Bits Linking Handles:

ut it’s also disingenuous, because you are a staffer, and you’re seeing things through staffer eyes the whole time, and can bring in the weight of staff whenever you want (either through yourself or one of your fellow staffers).

Yeah, it’s always felt icky to me to be “undercover staff”.

I think it’s better for a game when everyone knows who everyone’s alts are, staff included. It just avoids a bunch of particular kinds of drama, and it boosts trust.

And to clarify, when I say that folks don’t owe anyone their OOC identity, I meant across games. Forcing people to share alt info within the same game is different IMHO.

@catzilla I agree with the principle, but you don’t need a player handle to link alts on a game. You can do it with tags.

@bear_necessities said in Staff Bits Linking Handles:

As far as staff having a handle, I prefer to play on games where I know the admin. I do think staff alts should be tagged.

I’m 100% on board with this as well.

@bear_necessities said in Staff Bits Linking Handles:

If you don’t have a handle, you have something to hide, and my brows immediately raise.

As the creator of the handle system, this kind of bothers me. The system was never intended to pressure people into identifying themselves across games. There has been enough stalking, creeping, and other shenanigans in the MU community (and the internet at large) that I don’t think anyone owes anyone else their OOC identity. Ever. Staff included.

That’s why even Ares games have a built-in alternative method for alt tracking that doesn’t require a player handle.

It’s meant to be a fun tool for those who choose to use it. I’m not a fan of it being held against those who don’t.

(Also in practical terms a creeper can just make a new handle, so I’m not sure what it gains you really.)

@Jennkryst I don’t believe that’s accurate. The writers didn’t have a plan for Head Six. She was a Mystery Box because they thought it was cool. Even in a recent interview, RDM was still insisting that the final season writers’ room didn’t want to come out and call them “angels” because they didn’t want to put a name on it and kill the mystery.

There was a copy of the original BSG series bible floating around the internet years ago. Some relevant snippets:

Our show is built on the idea that a science fiction series can employ ground-breaking special effects, dynamic cinematography, realistic situations, believable characters and explore contemporary social and political issues without sacrificing dramatic tension or excitement.

(Our new) approach is to introduce realism into what has heretofore been an aggressively unrealistic genre.

We will eschew the usual stories about parallel universes, time-travel, mind-control, evil twins, God-like powers and all the other cliches of the genre.

My favorite aspects of the series were the things mentioned above. The fact that they extinguish the fire in the pod by venting it to space. The running count of people left alive in the fleet. The time they spend worrying about supplies. The commentary on social issues and moral dilemmas. Even most of Head Six’s original shenanigans could be attributed just to Baltar being insane (like when he points to the place they should strike on that one moon and then Six attributes it to “God guiding his hand”; they deliberately left it vague enough that maybe he just got lucky.)

So yes, quite clearly they ENDED UP where you describe, but I think there’s a ton of evidence that this was something they backed themselves into, and not a clear plan from the start.

@Jennkryst for me, there’s a big difference between “religious themes” and literal on-camera angels. I also think some of the giant plot holes you pointed out were theme-breaking. But of course reasonable people can disagree on such things, and none of that stopped me from enjoying the show. i just would have enjoyed it even more (probably in the same storytelling tier as B5) if they’d had a better plan from the start.

@Aria Yes, B5 was the best.

IMHO BSG fell into the same “Mystery Box Storytelling” pit that Lost did at around the same timeframe. Set up a mystery, and hope you can come up with a satisfying resolution by the time it matters. The trouble is that’s NEVER been how satisfying mysteries work. Seat-of-your-pants storytelling has its place, but not in a mystery. @Jennkryst is exactly right about how that wrecked the plot. They painted themselves into such a corner that the only way out was divine intervention.

BUT I still love the show. Low-tech sci-fi military stuff is my jam. The characters are great. The writing in any individual episode is usually stellar, especially in the early seasons.

For all the various Battlestar MU* peeps, you might enjoy this react series in which Katee Sackhoff (aka Starbuck), her husband, and the occasional former cast guest star all react to the BSG episodes in order. They’re up to Season 2 now and it’s so entertaining.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLiHvVvKZ9lt4-IZiosUjdxqB7IEQJJ6RU

It’s been awhile since I watched all the eps from the beginning, and it’s reminding me both of how great the show was, and how maddening the lack of a coherent “plan” was lol.

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

To find out how the story resolves? Just because everyone knows all the details of a setting doesn’t mean they know how it plays out.

Even if you DO know how things play out, it can still be fun. I’ve been on plenty of games based on established settings (Star Wars, Battlestar, Babylon 5, etc.) where the lore wasn’t in any way opaque but we still had lots of fun playing in that sandbox.

@Jumpscare said in Hello, Survey, and Looking for Recs:

With everyone’s responses, and to my surprise, I guess that makes Silent Heaven a MUSH, haha. Strange that I didn’t think of it as one.

I mean, Silent Heaven call themselves:

RPI-lite: MUSH-style RP + coded support for supplementary skills.

So it seems that they’re trying to straddle the line a bit. Nothing wrong with that.

There’s a very clear distinction between minimal-RP, code-heavy MUDs and code-light, RP-heavy MUSHes, but there are also varying shades of gray in-between. And the MUX distinction, which is usually just MUSH but with a different codebase. I have no idea where MUCK falls. Is it just MUD with a different codebase?

@Jumpscare said in Hello, Survey, and Looking for Recs:

For me, I see them as how much of the game is dictated by code.

I agree that the code plays a part, but I don’t think it’s that simple. There have been plenty of games branded as “MUSH”, running on MUSH platforms (aka TinyMUX / PennMUSH), that had significant amounts of coded mechanics. I never once heard any of them called RPIs.

In fact, I’ve been playing MUSHes since the 1990s and only heard the term RPI for the first time a couple years ago. It seemed like a term that had originated in the MUD community.

Now it’s possible someone from the MUD side might have looked at a game like TGG and said: “Oh, that’s a RPI.” But TGG called itself a MUSH, and I never heard anyone call it a RPI. Nor would it fit the “No OOC commo”, “figure out everything IC” rules that @Kestrel described earlier. (which, as an aside, seem REALLY weird to me. Unless you’re literally playing yourself, your character is always going to have knowledge you don’t have. Any RPG that doesn’t have a mechanism for bridging the gap between IC and OOC knowledge is bizarre IMHO.)

@MisterBoring said in Hello, Survey, and Looking for Recs:

I’ve been in this hobby 20+ years now and I still don’t know what makes RPI unique

We don’t really have good categories for any of it. There’s a technology side based on which server you use, but the rest is really just vibes.

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

Has anyone seen a system that effectively incentivizes players to run things for other players?

I don’t think this works, like, at a human nature level. People are generally not motivated to volunteer for things because you offer them peanuts. They might be motivated by altruism (it’s good for others) or self-interest (if everyone pitches in, I also get to play and have fun), or genuine enjoyment. But I don’t think most folks are going to be meaningfully motivated to do something hard by a tiny carrot.

(I’m not saying you can’t reward someone to make them feel appreciated, just that it’s not an effective motivational tool on its own.)

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

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 agree with this. My experience is very different from a lot of folks here, I think. I make my own fun, and it doesn’t take a whole lot of people to do it with. I’m choosy about which games I play on, but once I choose a game? I’m usually there until they turn the lights off. (And on several occasions have spun off into sandboxes or sequel games to keep going even after that).

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

And with many people moving to play-by-post(like what Ares does and I say that with no hate),

Ares lets people play how they wish to play. Yes there are many MU*ers who prefer async, but you only have to find a couple like-minded folks to get a healthy chunk of trad/live scenes going.

@Tez said in "My Guy Syndrome":

What do you think this looks like in practice?

I think maybe we’re just using different definitions. I’ve literally never heard of yes-and outside of improv acting. Here are a few quotes that reflect how it’s always been explained to me:

a rule-of-thumb in improvisational theater that suggests that an improviser should accept what another improviser has stated (“yes”) and then expand on that line of thinking (“and”)… one should not reject the basic premises introduced by the other person (Wikipedia)

There are no wrong ideas in improv. Every suggestion, no matter how outlandish or seemingly insignificant, is an opportunity to explore and create. By saying “yes, and,” improvisers open themselves up to endless possibilities and tap into a wellspring of creativity. It’s not just about agreeing with your scene partner; it’s also about building on their ideas, no matter how wacky they may seem. (Backstage)

That is just so far from my experience MUSHing I can’t even.

ETA: This “yes and” thing has probably tangented too far to be useful, but the reason I was brought it up originally is because I really don’t think this is the default MU behavior. Folks will consider other players, sure, but mostly they just do what’s fun for them, within the bounds of what they think their character would do. I think that’s why you get a lot of straying over into “my guy” territory.

@Roz said in "My Guy Syndrome":

we’re not talking about TTRPGs, though; we’re talking about MU*s. they may take systems from TTRPGs, stats and dice and such, but the social structure of how players have to persistently interact is entirely different from a tabletop experience.

Yes, I realize MUs are not TTRPGS (obviously). I said it was because of the TTRPG influence, which I believe came over along with the “stats and dice and such”.

Seriously - have you seen “yes-and/no-but” as a commonplace principle in your MUSHing experience? Because I haven’t, even on games with a cooperative focus.

@Roz said in "My Guy Syndrome":

i really don’t think anyone was likely intending citing this to mean they think everyone should literally be saying yes to everything every single time

I was challenging it even as a general rule / starting point. “Yes, and…” is a perfectly valid improv technique, but that’s not the framework that most TTRPGs (and by proxy many MUs, which have one foot in their TTRPG roots) operate within.

It’s not: “My character wants to shoot the Cylon.” “Yes, and…”

More often it’s “roll for it” or even “no that isn’t going to work.”

Again, I’m not saying you can’t approach things that way, I just don’t think most MUSHers do.

That aside, I think @Trashcan raises an important point that “No, but…” is an equally valid improv response.

@chorus said in "My Guy Syndrome":

Just in general, MUSH RP is a “yes, and” medium.

It’s totally fine if a game sets that as an expectation, but that has NOT been my experience with MUSH RP in general. And as a staffer, I’ve seen entirely too many nonsensical, theme-breaking, logic-breaking requests for me to ever approach a game that way.

Collaboration doesn’t mean always saying “yes” to everything. It means trying your best to find a mutually-fun solution, but also recognizing that sometimes people want opposite things and someone’s not going to get their idea of fun.

@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?”

Yeah, that can be fun - but I still think there’s nothing wrong with politely bowing out of a scene where your character just doesn’t fit.

@Ashkuri said in "My Guy Syndrome":

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

But a lot of those things aren’t inherently bad. If your character wouldn’t think the planet is safe, and it’s really important to you to honor that, I don’t think it’s a cardinal sin to politely sit a scene out. Same for RPing out an IC grudge, or some of the other things you listed.

“My guy syndrome”, for me, is all about attitude.

“Hey, want to RP at the spaceport?”
“Nah, my guy wouldn’t go do that part of town.” vs “Well, my guy has a thing against spaceports, but I’d be happy to RP with you at the marketplace.”

“We’re going down to the planet for the plot.”
“I’m not leaving - my guy wouldn’t think it’s safe.” vs. “Have fun! I’m going to sit this one out because my guy wouldn’t want to go down there.”

There’s nothing wrong with being true to your character, as long as you’re not a jerk about it OOCly.

@MisterBoring said in Non-toxic PvP:

just clearly delineate IC vs OOC.

If someone is having trouble delineating IC vs OOC when bad things happen to their character, I don’t think changing the letters is going to help.

@MisterBoring said in Non-toxic PvP:

For some people PvP bears the distinction that indeed the player of the character wishes to end the fun of other players.

But sometimes they literally do. It’d be nice if we all lived in an ideal world where there was never any OOC bleed and everyone was a perfectly good sports, but that’s just not the case. Many people like PVP over PVE precisely because of the other P in the equation. It really IS about going up against other players and winning. That doesn’t mean it’s malicious, just competitive.

Good sportsmanship is more about playing by the rules and not being an a-hole than it is about making sure the other person/team “has fun”. (Especially when your idea of fun is “I win” and so is theirs.)