Oh, this shit absolutely happens everywhere. It happens in my game.

I interpreted this thread as a warning about two specific players residing in a specific game.

This kind of mobbing behaviour where a couple of people choose a victim to isolate and corral a bunch of flying monkeys to harrass them (because they “deserve it”) is such a classic move in this hobby that I could name a few players off the top of my head.

I think I’m safe though, because WoD isn’t something I play in.

Part of the reason we’re now drowning in content slop farms that themselves use generative AI is because advertising revenue made content profitable and incentivised creating content as quickly as possible while eliminating any kind of standards for quality.

I don’t have a lot of sympathy for advertisers or those who are paid by them because they form part of the ecosystem that put us in this mess. Let the model collapse, it stopped serving us long ago.

If LLM chatbots weren’t so chronically wrong, using them to dodge adverts and engagement bombardment might actually be a decent use case.

I don’t have anything against AI generated images for face claims, though these images aren’t art and shouldn’t be referred to as such. I generally prefer human-made digital art and have my own personal image folder of stuff I’ve collected over the years. Whenever I make a new character I just flip through and pick something.

Again though, I’m coming across less authentic art these nights and my cache isn’t growing as much as it once was. Annoying.

And it’s getting harder to find good context for verbally describing things especially hairstyles when the internet is full of AI slop. Try looking up a medium chunky bob right now and see how many different visuals that can mean, because the infrastructure is aimed at gathering as much traffic as possible and not at being actually receptive to the specific meaning of words.

There are some writing resources out there for facial features, clothes, hair, but they’re getting harder to find. Maybe we could start a sort of library for it.

The bar RP is lubricant. It needs to be there for the RP to work. And it’s fine, as long as you’re building towards the next plot thing.

Because if all you have is lubricant you don’t have an engine, just a bathtub full of grease.

I don’t know where I was going with this.

People call this “hallucination”. I think we should stop letting them assign a new name to an existing phenomenon. The LLM is malfunctioning. It is saying things that are wrong. It is failing to do what it was designed to do.

@SqeakyClean What did they have to say for themselves?

Interesting but I’m sure you’d have found the same thing by googling LiberationMUSH. I can’t fathom using a tool for research when it’s wrong like… Most of the time.

@RedRocket Man, I’m a little sad I missed this game. Sounds like something I’d have tried.

The trailing off without resolution is why I don’t RP on forums anymore. At least in a MUSH people don’t start and abandon a story a week.

Is Songs of Avaria still running? It looked like an original setting.

@Pavel said in Lords and Ladies Game Design:

Is there some way to have the typical Lords and Ladies experience people desire whilst also removing the reliance on/availability of NPCs?

I guess it depends on the scope of your game and what kinds of characters are included. Like you said, NPCs are for the boring bits. If every character is nobility I think it’s probably fine to send your lackeys. If your L&L game has a population of commoners and lower nobility, people really need to think about who’s missing out when they delegate to NPCs.

In my experience the PC with the most power, or the first player to hear about it handles it using their NPC minions. It ends up as:

GM, to King: There are reports of zombie coyotes around the villages west of the city.

King, to GM: I move my personal army to go take care of it, and my best friend Danielle can go bless the land.

Abelard, Bridget, and Camille: How can we get involved?

King: Fuck off, it’s handled.

Later, some political rival: Why didn’t the City Watch Commander do anything about those zombie coyotes? They’re inactive and lazy!

This is why I’m a fan of the bottom-up version where Squire Manfred and Lady Ophelia get looped in. The scenario is more immediate and if they end up needing backup they can kick it up the chain of command. But the best way is for the GM to directly loop in as many people as possible because if you’re relying on players to involve other players… they fucking won’t.

Empathy fatigue.

To me, story hooks and avenues to distribute information is so important.

My experience with metaplots is that a big mystery will open up, a bunch of players will put together a PRP to touch the plot, it will utterly bounce off, and then the plot will go underground with the player it was always meant for and I’ll never hear about the mystery again. Then a new mystery pops up, repeat ad nauseum.

You really need to be honest with players about how they can get involved and actually be open to them doing so. And if you rely on hearsay for information to get around, a lot of the time that simply won’t happen.

UGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHJJ

That is all. I just had to get it out of my system.

I think ideally they shouldn’t play because they will benefit from insider knowledge and bias, and will also form their own positive biases about characters their character becomes close to. But as multiple people have pointed out, that’s kind of an insane ask. Nobody wants to put in that kind of work for no reward.

In my opinion the next best thing is for staff characters to be totally anonymous. That way they can be just another guy in the background without getting mobbed by people looking to do a little bootlicking for brownie points. If their identity is known, they are constantly going to be thrust into the spotlight ahead of anyone else, and people will be afraid to oppose them.

@Warma-Sheen I’m so sick of having to justify my stats. I shouldn’t have to write that my character was a career chef just to beg enough points to make toast. I’ve been told multiple times my character needs more experience for their build but I look at what I’m asking for and my character is in the range of “fucking useless”.