@thrax said in Numetal/Retromux:

When Staff came to speak to her she did not hide, nor keep information from them. The thing I wonder is how can they ban someone for avoiding conflict from someone known to be a problem. Yes she did hide herself, but is that in itsself worth a full gameban?

Hiding yourself from players you have a no contact with in order to RP with them is something I think deserves a gameban, regardless of how open you are with staff.

It really feels like Ganymede has just decided to let Derp drive it into the ground out of some need to avoid losing face from reversing a decision.

Well, I’m reducing my MSB activity to lurking now. Gany just basically said that the only person who needed to be apologized to on MSB for what happened was Derp.

I get two things from reading stuff from this thread.

1. That I definitely am not the target audience for Lords & Ladies roleplay.

2. That Arx, even with all of it’s trouble throughout its history, is a pretty good example of ‘doing it right’ in our hobby.

Congrats to all you Arx players and staff for doing cool stuff.

@Juniper said in Numetal/Retromux:

Most people want to be special in some way, sometimes tactfully and sometimes… not. I think we all get to have more fun when we’re not veering aggressively away from being “cringe”.

The vast majority of players in our hobby understand how to make unique special characters without trying their damnedest to drive it into everyone’s faces at 100 miles an hour.

@Cygnus said in The 3-Month Players:

Without PVP acting as a failsafe, these players often cause games to fail because no one can stand not being able to meaningfully stand up to the bully.

The failsafe against toxic players should be staff action. Going PVP just because a player is toxic seems toxic in it’s own right.

@Trashcan said in AI In Poses:

“I don’t want to RP with GenAI because it’s not very good” is not going to age well as a position.

I think the better position is “I don’t want to RP with GenAI because I’m here to RP with real people.”

@Pacha said in Empire Discussion Thread:

My assumption (perhaps false!) is that when opening a game one wants to develop a large and diverse base of players.

I feel like we’re reaching a point where new gamerunners are going to focus more on just running the game they want to run rather than running a game that attracts a large crowd.

Starting a new thread, for a new year.

First up, and this one hit me hard, David Lynch, legendary director of such weirdness as Eraserhead, Twin Peaks, and the original 1980s version of Dune.

@hobos

Please stop. If you actually care, stop, step away, and come back in a few days or even a week or two. You’re making yourself look bad with each new post.

@somasatori This totally looks like Rick Sanchez wrote a TTRPG review.

@Faraday Here’s what I don’t like when I say pacifists shouldn’t join CvC factions, using the same two characters @Jumpscare made up:

MH: I’ve secured the Staff of Power for our faction. We must be prepared to defend it, because the Winter Hills Clan will kill to claim it for themselves. The war will be long, we must be prepared to defend the Staff with our lives, and unfortunately, we will have to take theirs, as they are willing to give their lives to take it.

PP: Yeah, I joined this faction because I like the color scheme of the faction on my PB. I wasn’t aware this was a CvC faction and have no intent in helping anything ICly.

MH:

@Faraday said in Non-toxic PvP:

Pacifists literally do exist, and a pacifist trapped in a high-conflict faction could be an interesting character concept if done well.

There’s a difference between being an IC pacifist and being an OOC pacifist that prefers everyone be pacifist, which I think is the version @Juniper was commenting about.

@Jumpscare said in Non-toxic PvP:

Non-consensual character death is the least fun and most toxic outcome.

I think this differs player by player. There’s a small subsection of players that are fully okay with non-consensual character death because they (myself included) chose to allow that as a potential for their PC’s plot line. Death requiring consent should be the standard, but with the ability to opt out if one chooses.

@Faraday said in Non-toxic PvP:

I think that’s great, but also an example of what I mean about systems not being scalable. Ice cream socials, debriefs, etc. work great for managing bleed with small groups of friends and/or modestly sized LARP groups.

We did it with 55 players at our largest session. A few of the players would stop playing early to set up the ice cream buffet and we made sure to let everybody have a voice during the debrief. I could see it definitely being an issue in larger games though I would also compartmentalize the debriefs into smaller subgroups in that situation.

I would turn it on and immediately request to staff that I not be given the bonus XP for doing so. I have no interest in incentives of that kind and also have no problem with my PCs dying or being permanently maimed or whatever as long as it makes good story and the Staff and other Players are all dedicated to making whatever happens the best story possible.

I know it doesn’t apply for a MU, but one LARP I was in had a particularly fun way to deal with bleed. Ice cream socials. After every session of the LARP, we would all gather in the main room we were using for the LARP and break out ice creams of various flavors and an assortment of toppings. We would sit around eating ice cream and discussing stuff that gave us bleed, making sure to point out positive instances and negative. Usually everybody would go home feeling good about it, and over the year of the LARP’s storyline, OOC drama only sparked up twice, and in both cases because of external events to the LARP.

@Faraday said in Non-toxic PvP:

I think that the more immersed you are with your character, the more likely there is to be bleed and OOC competitiveness.

This is very true. It’s a difficult balance for both players and staff to feel immersed while managing bleed and OOC competitiveness.

For me, I think bleed is just going to happen, it’s how we as players and staff work together to deal with it in a healthy fashion that’s important.

@Kestrel I feel like that comes down to personal experience. For me, I’ve seen fully cerebral Jesper Lynd / James Bond style conflicts go rather well even in a fully transparent situation. In those cases, the players of the character locked in CvC use the transparency to make the conflict a better watch for those people just on the outside looking in. Big reveals and stuff still happen, but both sides of the conflict are in on it from the start so that the story gets more detailed.

I think there’s a number of people who believe that CvC automatically involves the entire playerbase whether they want to be involved or not, and really, it should only involve the players of the characters directly fighting in the narrative, be it a crowbar duel in an alley behind a bar or a long drawn out series of espionage plays that result in the PC that is the King of Royalland being assassinated quietly in his private library.

@bear_necessities In games where I’ve experienced it, it works something like this:

• Staff are open with players regarding upcoming plots and players are open with staff as to how their character would respond to those situations.
• Players regularly debrief with each other (and staff) before and after scenes to work together on crafting a narrative all can enjoy and ensure that bleed is handled in a healthy fashion.
• PVP Conflict scenes are heavily discussed by the players before the IC interactions begin. Staff is on hand through all of this to ensure all parties are being heard in the OOC discussion and to make sure all of the games various rules are being followed fairly. Doubly so for any scene resulting in the final resolution of a PC’s storyline (aka death or other permanent change to the character that renders them unplayable).

In one LARP I’ve participated in, a particularly brutal PVP scene ended in the players of the two conflicting PCs having a big happy cry and many tales being told at dinner after the game that night because debriefing techniques were used for the whole game.