@Pavel said in Numetal/Retromux:
The leadership isn’t bad because it’s demanding, or evil, or cruel, it’s bad because it’s a power trip for some prat who has no interest in aiding in the telling of interesting stories for anyone who isn’t them or their cronies/friends/harem.
You also forgot “because sometimes staff just hands out the leadership roles and then those players just ignore that aspect of their character and never actually do anything at all within the PC organization.”
@Wizz said in Numetal/Retromux:
from an objective third party, there is no chance, zero, none, that “I stand up to staff by forcing them into a combat scenario and everyone claps!” works. please understand that I am being frank with you in hopes that it helps, not to mock you.
I’m not suggesting people stand up to staff that way, I’m suggesting that sometimes, PC leadership (especially in a WoD game) is bad, and needs to be ICly dealt with. Now, if that’s causing a scene and berating them ICly or just going full PVP, whatever. But sometimes IC leadership churn is good for the health of the game.
@Gashlycrumb said in Numetal/Retromux:
Larry Leader tells your PC, “Fuck you, you useless fuck. Now lick my asshole for a few hours every week if you want me to give you the chance to do something that will benefit me and almost certainly harm you. I will not pay you for it. I won’t even let it improve your reputation if I can prevent that, and I can.”
So your PC does it 'cause that’s good RP?
No. Your character’s IC response to being asked is normally where the good RP happens. Though perhaps in some cases the response leads to the same request and repetition is the definition of insanity.
@Gashlycrumb said in Numetal/Retromux:
Having to force my character to act against his own interests in order to participate was the problem.
This is a very interesting statement, because for some people, asking their characters to act against their own interests is good RP.
@Gashlycrumb said in Numetal/Retromux:
just being a disruptive kamikaze scene, no.
If enough PCs take disruptive kamikaze scenes at the PC leadership, then one would hope staff would take that as a sign that something is amiss in Denmark.
@Pavel said in Numetal/Retromux:
in WoD, it could be either or both.
Very Very true.
The whole shading them out of plot thing is definitely an asshole move though.
@Gashlycrumb said in Numetal/Retromux:
taking risks for and licking the ass of a “leader” who insulted them, openly informed them that he’d fuck them over at the slightest chance, and never rewarded them
Isn’t this just on-theme for… Vampire?
I think they work for some people, but I myself honestly forget they’re in the game, even when I sit my character at a place.
So for me it’s:
@Prototart said in RP Safari - Pacing Styles:
and it’s before my time but I know there were people doing play-by-post on forums and even over email and fucking Usenet in the 90s.
I remember that stuff when I was in college, and totally remember ignoring invites to join that stuff because I was running a different tabletop group almost every night (or playing video and computer games).
@Faraday said in RP Safari - Pacing Styles:
I just don’t enjoy it as much. It’s just hard for me to stay engaged and keep track of things.
Me too. I have too much going on in my life (family, work, gaming, etc) to be able to pay enough attention for async. I honestly believe that the only way I could enjoy it would be if I stopped doing lots of other things that heavily ate my focus, but then if I’m just dedicated to playing one game and focusing on one async scene to the detriment of everything else, why am I playing async to begin with?
I’d want to see something like this as a staff accessible report:
+Scene Pacing Stats+
Current Average Pacing: 13 min / pose.
Slowest Current Scene: 22 hrs 11 min / pose
Fastest Current Scene: 6 min / pose
@Faraday said in RP Safari - Pacing Styles:
I think folks are dramatically underestimating just how much mathematical averages can be skewed by outliers when there are sample sizes as small as most MU scenes have.
This really doesn’t have to be this hard. We’ve been having scenes with different pacing since I started playing in 19-fricking-95. All Ares does is provide more tools so that adults can communicate and collaborate with each other in the hopes of finding people who like to play in the same way. And it even includes a handy guide to explain said tools:
While I do think that having pacing information might be helpful to some people in finding RP, after thinking about it more, my interest in tracking it is purely curiosity. I just want to see the data.
Chuck Norris, legendary martial artist, actor, and subject of meme jokes everywhere.
@Faraday said in RP Safari - Pacing Styles:
@MisterBoring said in RP Safari - Pacing Styles:
If the system had a way to track the date / time for each pose, it could feasibly keep a running tally on the average time between poses and then sort the scenes by what type they are.
Except as mentioned above, not everybody agrees with these definitions.
Yeah, I’m aware, but even having the ability to look at a list of scenes and just see flat data about the average time between poses might make it easier for people to choose scenes they want to join based on their personal preferences.
@Roz said in RP Safari - Pacing Styles:
@MisterBoring said in RP Safari - Pacing Styles:
For me my brain sorts the metric as:
Live - 1-15 minutes between poses
Async - 16 minutes - several hours between poses
Distracted - Days between poses.If the system had a way to track the date / time for each pose, it could feasibly keep a running tally on the average time between poses and then sort the scenes by what type they are.
i think you have async and distracted reversed. generally people are using “distracted” as “live but maybe a little longer between poses because folks are at work and might get pulled away for bits.” still often completed in one session, vs async potentially going over days.
I can concede that.
For me my brain sorts the metric as:
Live - 1-15 minutes between poses
Async - 16 minutes - several hours between poses
Distracted - Days between poses.
If the system had a way to track the date / time for each pose, it could feasibly keep a running tally on the average time between poses and then sort the scenes by what type they are.
@Faraday said in RP Safari - Pacing Styles:
Looking at the details of those scenes (private vs public, on-grid vs off-grid, scene pacing) is more problematic because those things can be edited, and for pacing may reflect a default value rather than an actual depiction of reality. So at that point I think it’s down to vibes.
Wouldn’t scene pacing be easy to capture if the game is capturing time / date stamps for all of the posing?
@Faraday said in RP Safari - Pacing Styles:
Ares just doesn’t provide that data in form that you can easily query after the fact.
I’d honestly be curious as to how many staff-folks try and track metrics for their games, and what, if any, tools they use to do so.
It’s my opinion that outside of the loosest standards, standards only hurt the game.
The loose standard I would set for RP would be “If your pose reads like a drunk person with large hands texting on a tiny phone, you need to work on your prose.”
Additionally, everybody’s posing habits change on a whim. If a player has lots of energy and inspiration, then lots of amazingly detailed prose comes out. If they’re burnt out from work and haven’t done anything creative in a few days, it’s probably gonna be a lot of short and to the point single line stuff.
My personal baseline is maybe 8-10 sentences. 2 paragraphs of descriptive stuff, 2-4 lines of dialogue. It fluctuates up and down from there.
