Yeah if the intended message was “people who OOCly wrongfun players for following the literal theme and are a tax on staff with their complaints about how the murder guild murders people and won’t reform” that makes way more sense.
But if you’re a mousey accountant for the murder guild and all you do is launder money and you don’t want to be murdering people but the cops come and don’t have enough fun shooting you in the face because you just lay down and die, I don’t see a problem.
So I’ve been keeping an eye on the GitHub for a bit and was >this< close to opening a thread yesterday about Arx seeming a way out but coming along pretty neat! Very interested to see what you’ve got cooked up.
@Faraday Not really, because PP didn’t HAVE TO get beaten up in the danger pit.
On SH, you can collab offscreen resolution.
Here, PP manipulated MH into an onscreen solution that was theme appropriate for MH, and theme-bendy for PP, that MH wanted to avoid actually. This was not satisfying to MH. (Fine - who cares. I agree this is whatever).
But now PP takes this as some opt-in to a long term, unresolvable grudge which MH actually tried to avoid, that PP uses to shit on anything further MH wants to do that is theme appropriate.
This essentially preys on the OOC empathies of other players which now come into play and start diluting the theme - requiring staff to come in and constantly assure the community that MH is acting in accordance with the theme of Faction X, so please stop DMing each other on discord about what an asshole he is and please stop messaging powerful NPCs to get rid of him.
What were some memorable scenes you’ve had over the years? Silly, emotional, outrageously boring, frustrating beyond all reason - I dunno. All of it and more!
Give a little synopsis of what went down and then say a few words about what made it memorable for you.
@Yam said in RP Safari - Pacing Styles:
What about you? What pace do you like and why?
Nothing beats live RP momentum and immediate character reaction.
I struggle with the yo-yo effect of Async and ultimately find I can’t get back into the scene mentally. It takes the spontaneous nature of RP out of the equation and I feel like that spontaneity is part and parcel in what makes RP special for me.
Also, acting “as” the character is important for me in RP. I can’t do that with async where I’m the character for a pose a day, or whatever the pacing is.
And maybe that’s the actual distinction: I RP to “act”, not to “write”.
Oh no my what about my hog pit nostalgia
@bear_necessities said in Does Anyone Even Care?:
What’s stopping you from being a stay to the end person? Or, alternatively, what makes/made you a stay to the end person?
I am a “stay until it stops being fun person”.
When the something-other-than-fun to fun ratio tips to a certain amount, I leave.
There are a million factors involved in that, and honestly a game runner couldn’t hope to manage them all. I don’t expect them to try.
Just run a good game, try to keep it as interesting as you can, and if you need help, find smart people of proven skill to help you keep the players engaged. Have a clearly defined code of conduct for your game and be fair, public and predictable in how you enforce it.
Beyond that, there’s not much you can do. Of the games I’ve left, few were because I didn’t like how the game was run or the community. I lose interest in playing my own character and that’s mostly on me and my willingness and/or availability to breathe life into an idea that is only entertaining and not otherwise contributive to my existence on this planet.
@Roz said in Scenes within Scenes:
@Roadspike said in Scenes within Scenes:
I think that -in general- places code is trying to police a social problem (players having their characters react to things their characters shouldn’t be able to hear) with a code solution (making it so players can’t hear some of what’s said). And I’m generally not in favor of that.
that reasoning has honestly never occurred to me. for me, places/tt has always been about making large scenes more manageable by reducing the overall spam levels.
That reasoning has definitely occurred to me and is fully legitimate as a reasoning because - well - not everyone can control themselves when there’s tea / a great pun opportunity / or a fantastic ‘that’s what she said!’ just hanging there for the taking.
But the real purpose of table talk is to isolate the inane peanut gallery chatter from the actual important shit going on.
And also to make mostly one-way scenes (such as sermons, lectures, ceremonies, giant meetings and concerts) less boring.
@Faraday said in Non-toxic PvP:
This whole thing, by the way, is emblematic of why I don’t think PVP can ever be done in a constructive way among strangers on the internet.
I mean it’s inherently a YMMV proposition no matter how you work it. Personally, PVP with strangers works fine and constructively for me ¯_(ツ)_/¯ so long as those strangers are opted-in and on the same page about what game we are playing.
@Faraday Not really, because PP didn’t HAVE TO get beaten up in the danger pit.
On SH, you can collab offscreen resolution.
Here, PP manipulated MH into an onscreen solution that was theme appropriate for MH, and theme-bendy for PP, that MH wanted to avoid actually. This was not satisfying to MH. (Fine - who cares. I agree this is whatever).
But now PP takes this as some opt-in to a long term, unresolvable grudge which MH actually tried to avoid, that PP uses to shit on anything further MH wants to do that is theme appropriate.
This essentially preys on the OOC empathies of other players which now come into play and start diluting the theme - requiring staff to come in and constantly assure the community that MH is acting in accordance with the theme of Faction X, so please stop DMing each other on discord about what an asshole he is and please stop messaging powerful NPCs to get rid of him.
@Jumpscare said in Non-toxic PvP:
…but PP now uses it as ammunition to ICly derail anything MH tries to talk about afterwards.
Okay I think -this- is the actual crux of the issue, then, and I agree it is very not okay.
@Juniper Yes. What I’m meaning to point out is that the opposite unsatisfying situation is allowed and common: Murder Bro senselessly ramping up conflict with pacifist who joined the correct faction. Being threatening over petty slights to brand newbies who haven’t even joined a faction yet also happens and is treated IC and all part of the story and we work through it.
I don’t see how those can stand but being manipulative in the way illustrated in a high conflict faction can’t?
Again - if this is all about OOC nattering then fine, I get it and it makes sense. But it does seem like she is targeting the IC action itself in her example, whereas I think it’s a skill issue on McGuffin Holder’s part they can’t think their way through it and have to complain to staff.
Yeah. I’m not trying to be dense but I don’t see this as rising to the level of zero tolerance and inherently toxic.
On SH there is plenty of the opposite and arguably worse:
Low XP cafe worker: <very mild joke>
SuperStat McFighty who Never Takes Shit From No One: OMG WHAT DID YOU SAY?! I’M GOING TO STAB YOU!!!
And some of that is funny but a lot of it is eye roll inducing.
And the best defense is:
Low xp cafe worker: Okay come stab me quick then because I got shit to do today.
So honestly I think some weaponized ‘not gunna fight you’ balances things out.
I don’t think you can tolerate it one way and not the other. Many times the only way to defend against Big McFightster or UnChecked EgoBro is going to be removing any satisfaction in having beef with you.
Yeah if the intended message was “people who OOCly wrongfun players for following the literal theme and are a tax on staff with their complaints about how the murder guild murders people and won’t reform” that makes way more sense.
But if you’re a mousey accountant for the murder guild and all you do is launder money and you don’t want to be murdering people but the cops come and don’t have enough fun shooting you in the face because you just lay down and die, I don’t see a problem.
@Jumpscare said in Non-toxic PvP:
Another thing that you need to have zero tolerance for is what I’ll call the pacifist. The pacifist is a player archetype who will join a moderate or high conflict group, then do as much as they can for their faction without engaging in the central conflict. Then, when they get backed into a position where they’re called upon to resolve a conflict by fighting it out, they’ll agree to the fight but refuse to fight back, letting the opposing side win, in order to give the other players the most unsatisfying resolution possible. The two most notable offenders on Silent Heaven had to be removed from the game for their un-collaborative behavior.
Can you please clarify this and maybe give it an example? It doesn’t seem inherently toxic to either play a non-combat character in a conflict org or to refuse to give Mr. Big Fighty their ego ups in beating on a weaker character. I can actually think of several ways this would be intriguing.
@Kestrel Would you be comfortable naming who it is? Some of us might have similar stories about this person, too.
So I’ve been keeping an eye on the GitHub for a bit and was >this< close to opening a thread yesterday about Arx seeming a way out but coming along pretty neat! Very interested to see what you’ve got cooked up.
@Roadspike said in Scenes within Scenes:
If there’s “important shit” going on that the peanut gallery can’t interrupt? Don’t have the peanut gallery at the scene. Have them in their own side-scene, either happening at the same time as the “important shit” scene that they can watch freely, or RPed after the "important shit* scene but ICly taking place at the same time.
I can’t think of anything more annoying than reading a scene in one window and then flicking to another window to react to it in a separate scene. I also don’t see how this isn’t a “coded solution” to a social problem.
Plus, not everyone uses the web portal, so this two-scenes at once isn’t a great solution.
We just want to react to a scene in real-time. The way we might do - you know - if we were at a real event, sitting at our own group table in a real event setting?
Yeah - it takes some code to make that happen. It’s more realistic. A lot more realistic and less of a pain than trying to schedule a whole other scene where we have to read the log from the first scene and then react to the log while pretending we’re there. And it cuts down on a lot of spam for others who wouldn’t ICly be interested or able to hear what’s going on.
If it’s a one-way scene that again, can’t be interrupted? Don’t make it a scene! I’m sure we’ve all been in plenty of scenes where we thought, “This didn’t need to be a scene, it could’ve been a post/vignette/scene-set.” So don’t make them scenes. Have the GM post up their too-important-to-be-interrupted scene as a Vignette, and then have the actual scene be everyone’s reaction to it afterwards. You know, when people can actually interact with each other without interrupting.
99% of what is being talked about are player-run parties, ceremonies, sermons, etc. Not GM-run scenes or plot-important settings. Just RP events where the entire point is for people to gather.
One stand-out example were these dinners someone on Arx would put on that were blind-folded dinner dates with strangers. There would be hostess emits of the waiters, etc. and what was going on in the environment, and then with some exceptions we would primarily tabletalk with the blind dates we were paired up with.
Your solution for such an event would be a vignette written by the hostess, who would have to private message every attendee who they are supposed to sit with, and then like 10 individually scheduled one-on-one scenes tying into that. Sounds really exhausting.