I think another thing to consider is that in the “old” days a lot of the live RP was like…pickup RP. You went somewhere on grid, stuck up your LFG flag and whoever turned up turned up and you sort of just made do with that. This led to a lot of the dreaded Bar RP.

The deliciousness of Ares is (for me) that I don’t have to put up with that any more. I can go and read everyone’s hooks, pick out who interests me (and almost as importantly, who I have no interest in) and then just seek to RP with those 5-10 people.

That lends itself to more 1 on 1 private scenes that can very naturally go async as the parties go about their lives, and I find those scenes tend to be more directed and purposeful. I am going to stick with that scene until its finished, rather than just “posing out” of the bar scene when my interest/patience wanes.

@tsar said in MU Peeves Thread:

But you can’t convince me that running plots on a game is the same responsibility as caring for living, breathing beings in a real caretaking sense.

Sorry, I wasn’t trying to suggest that the two were directly equivalent.

My point is that even if you are “only a volunteer” by volunteering you are still agreeing to be responsible for fulfilling the basic function of the role you have volunteered for.

@Gashlycrumb

I do kind of agree. I have staffed and run games, and I am definitely in favour of being kind and compassionate towards staff, respecting that they have limited time, etc., etc., which are all very good and true things that are mentioned here frequently.

I do think there is an extreme other end of the scale, where there are no expectations on staff to do anything within any sort of timeframe ever.

Yes, they are volunteers, but if they were volunteering at the dog shelter, I would still expect them to at least show up, keep the lights on and at least put some food down, even if they can’t manage to take them all on a walk.

@Jupiter said in Brainstorming Game Ideas:

instead of using +vote as XP-generation, it’d be activity based. XP is generated by spending blood and dice-rolling in Staff-run activities.

I kind of get what you’re going for here, but in this day and age when most of us have less, not more, time for MU, basing advancement on activity is a recipe for disaster, as only the players that are either on all the time, or crawling up staff’s butt to get in all the plots are going to move forward. Perhaps that is what you want, but I wouldn’t play on it.

Please try to keep a consistent emotional tone throughout the plot. Otherwise, we get these bizarre scenarios where the forces of hell are massing at the gates, but our heroes are all taking the afternoon to attend a “cuddle a baby lamb tea party” or whatever. It is jarring and detracts from the emotional richness of the wider story to inject pointless bathos for comic relief.

@Gashlycrumb

I think that sometimes it is to do with some well meaning GM who are just very conflict averse and struggle to say “no” to a request. And so your request going unanswered forever is the most unconfrontational “no” they can manage. Which is infuriating, but we are in a hobby with a lot of people who struggle socially, so I try and be as understanding as possible.

@Roadspike said in Empire Discussion Thread:

I fully believe that you can ban people who are more trouble than they are worth (cue Prue Leith’s “Not worth the calories”), and still maintain a large and diverse base of players. While there aren’t a ridiculous number of people in this hobby, there are plenty to have a nice, large, healthy database while removing the people who make staffing not fun.

Absolutely. I don’t think anybody is disputing that.

I think that what the calories are worth for whom and for what is up for discussion though. Obviously some people might think that donut is worth the calories, others will not.

I tend to agree with Faraday here:

@Faraday said in Empire Discussion Thread:

if I had banned everyone who was the least bit rude, pushy, entitled, disrespectful, snarky, or in any other way “out of line” on a single occasion, I wouldn’t have had any players.

But everyone has the right to choose their own diet. Perhaps I will eat the donut, and Ada will limit herself to a green salad. It is individual choice!

@Pavel

I would (gently, politely) just point out that I did immediately qualify the text you have quoted with:

“Of course, Ada is welcome to decide that is more effort than they are willing to put forth.”

@MisterBoring @Wizz

ActuaIly, this has been very interesting to me, in understanding how much “the numbers” seem to be a part of how I define the success or not of a game.

My initial thinking was definitely based on this deep assumption that one should be casting the widest possible net, pulling in the greatest possible amount of people and trying to be all things to all people. It’s probably based on my formative MUSH experience being in the big, multi-sphere WoD pit.

However, now I think of it I can totally see that not all games should or would strive for that. However, in this case looking at the available roster, it does seem like Ada is hoping to achieve a decently sized player base eventually.

In any case. Perspective broadened.

@Wizz @helvetica @Trashcan

To be absolutely clear, I totally respect Ada’s right to run their game as they like. As long as they are paying for the server they can declare that everyone has to play while standing on one foot and balancing a rubber chicken on their head, if that is their wish!

I am just saying that it is not how I would run a game and that I think it might end up in them banning people that could be put back on the right track with only a pretty small amount of effort. Of course, Ada is welcome to decide that is more effort than they are willing to put forth.

My assumption (perhaps false!) is that when opening a game one wants to develop a large and diverse base of players. So for me, banning people who don’t necessarily need to be is kind of a negative thing, because it is then a player (and perhaps their friends) that I don’t have.

Of course, there is an argument to be made that curating a smaller player base of very well behaved players and cutting others at the early stage of a problem behaviour is actually a better way forward, which is perhaps what Ada is aiming for.

So perhaps that is also colouring my opinion of whether it was “good” to ban the person. In any case, I fully support Ada’s choice to ban or not ban who they like. “Thin Skinned” may have been a poor choice of words previously, perhaps I meant something closer to “reactive”.

@Wizz

From my experience of staffing games and also having run a (reasonably) successful Ares game for a while, I can agree that it would be lovely if everyone approached staff with compassion and respect.

However, we’re all painfully aware we don’t live in a perfect world, and even great players can sometimes have a day where they have a shitty attitude.

I don’t know the whole saga of the interaction between these people. But, in this conversation, the player definitely made a couple of catty comments, which I can totally accept the staffer wanting to set a boundary about.

My point is that going straight to a ban felt a little extreme. I would probably have said something like “Hey, it’s not okay to talk to me like that. I’m done with this for today, but if you want to approach me again tomorrow with a better mindset, I am open to a discussion”.

Obviously, it is Ada’s game and they are paying to keep the lights on, so they can do as they like. But if they are going to ban everyone who ever makes a slightly backhanded remark, they may end up banning a lot of people.

I think it’s always worth mentioning that there are thriving non-english-speaking MU communities out there as well, operating in languages like Chinese, Spanish, German etc. and some of these are pretty busy even compared to the English-language ones.

From reading the log, I think @Warma-Sheen comes across as a little disrespectful and impatient toward the staffer. Had I been the staff member in that situation, I would definitely have asked them to go away, come back, and try again after an attitude adjustment.

However, Ada does also come across as a little thin-skinned here. It does feel like she has jumped to the nuclear option very quickly. If that is her definition of brow-beating, she should prepare to feel that way a lot with the average MU crowd, honestly.

@tsar

Hey there!

I am slightly amazed you figured this out at all, let alone after so much time! But upon referring to this post:

https://brandmuday.mythicus.net/topic/121/tsar-s-playlist?_=1761253660522

I think you are actually spot on, so great detective work!

As I mentioned in the post, I don’t dislike you (or anyone else from that scene) in any way. I was just using this thread for its purpose, which was to vent about some irritation I had about it on the day.

Honestly, I have not spent the intervening time stressing about it or plotting heinous acts of revenge, so we are all good as far as I am concerned! In fact, I would go so far as to say that my gripe was not with you at all, so much as how the others in that scene responded to your character vs how they responded to mine.

TO CLARIFY! (since I now remember this!) I think you absolutely warrant people being happy to see you. But despite my being as nice as I knew how to be on that game, what I remember I would often see was…

Pacha logs on

Pacha greets folks

crickets

Tsar logs on, a short or a long time after

It is one minute after midnight on January first

Which I completely appreciate is an unreasonable thing to be grumpy about, especially given that this is mostly down to random chance, people can say hi to whom they like, I don’t know who was awake and at their screens yada yada…so it could absolutely have been an “all in my head” thing.

But in my defence, this is a peeves thread, not a fully justified and reasonable grievances thread!

In any case, yes, I am all good, and I hope you are too.

When I am on a game I usually bring a friend or two along with me, and I primarily play with my friends. If there are characters I then meet, roleplay with and enjoy, I will also play with them. Those people, I usually seek fairly proactively to become friendly with also, because this is my hobby, and I like to be friends with the people I do my hobby with.

There are inevitably characters on a game that I do not know, and whose profile/RP hooks don’t interest me. I don’t feel the need to proactively audition all of those people “just in case” they turn out to be interesting. I try and sign up for events as much as possible, and I find that a good, low commitment way to check out a handful of people all at once, and then follow up with people who seem cool.

That said, if someone approaches me and specifically asks to RP I will almost never say no. There are only a very few people in the hobby I actively try and avoid playing with, and all of those people are extremely aware of the fact as far as I am aware!

@Wizz

I do agree in one sense. I am craving, desperately craving, anywhere to get my WoD/Dark Urban Fantasy fix, but there are only a couple of kind of dubious places to get that right now.

The beauty of Ares is that it allows someone with no technical expertise to get a game up and running (I did this!) as long as you use the tools provided and don’t try to reinvent the wheel. So it allows a lot of games that would never have seen the light of day previously to actually exist.

Because Ares allows plugins, my understanding is that it can theoretically support any number of RPG systems; it just needs someone to create and maintain the plugin that others then use. If someone was to make a fully working WoD plugin for Ares, I have no doubt the games would come.

However, I think FS3 is just so flexible that it can adapt to any number of settings, and also, there are some experts who have got the combat on it down to such a science that most things can be “made to fit” FS3 even if it isn’t their intended/natural home.

I think we are more likely to see WoD but made to work in FS3 before we see fully featured WoD in Ares, for that reason.

@MisterBoring

What do you mean by clique building? So often I see people complaining about what they consider to be cliques, but which I would just consider to be “groups of friends playing together”.

I have to say I did eventually give this place a try, and I didn’t have the greatest time with the staff there either.

I didn’t interact with Vincent, but I do remember seeing Eddie’s player being absolutely awful to him on the channel. To be clear, that player was not permanently banned for harassment (which is how I would interpret “banned” in my thought) but instead was temporarily banned for one week.

I did mostly enjoy my time on this game, and the players were a lot of fun, even if my time there ended on a sour note. My findings were that the staff are very interested and supportive, until they decide not to be any more, after which it took a rather sharp downturn.

It doesn’t really seem shady to me? On reading it, it just seems to say that they have the right to use anything you create or put on the game or wiki. It’s non-exclusive, so you aren’t losing any right, just giving them one, and it’s non commercial, so they can’t use it to make money or for business purposes.

To me, obvious uses of it would seem to cover situations like:

• You volunteer as build staff. Some time later you fall out with the game’s administration and leave. You cannot demand they delete all those rooms you made, as you have given them a license to use that writing.

• Your character becomes the vampire prince. Two weeks later you vanish from the game and are never heard from again. The staff is allowed to turn your PC into an NPC until they eventually replace them. You have given them a license to do this.

• You volunteer to create a number of wiki pages and help the staff with wiki organisation. You later become uncontactable. The staff is allowed to alter your design, use the template elsewhere on the site, or replace what you did with something altogether different.

So, it is a bit overly formal, but there are definitely plenty of legitimate use cases for having such a clause.

The London one is open now if anyone wants to check it out.

https://towersmux.net/