I’m going to have to lay down more one-line pithy metaphors, just so you all can give me poetry in response.

@somasatori I dunno, I think it’s a stupid people problem a lot more than it is a power parity problem. Drunk drivers don’t care about the speed limit.

@hellfrog Mage is also a problem. I don’t hear much about Changeling, but I don’t play much changeling so it’s not really in my echo chamber.

To your point, though, I think large-scale antagonisms could well be a large part of the issue. At least in nWoD and CofD (which is a stupid name) the different supernatural groups don’t really care about each other all that much—because there’s no metaplot really.

@Yam said in Numetal/Retromux:

I do not think saying you generally have your work cut out for you when running a game with very, very dated social mores is lazy and reductive.

I was, perhaps, unclear. What I meant was that people (usually shitty staff) allow negative behaviour and then cover it up with the excuse that the genre is at fault. Which is, or at least has been, a common thing.

I fear that the all-too-common assertion of this or that genre being particularly problematic abnegates the true bearers of responsibility: the players and staff playing those games. We can talk ad nauseam about systems and lore and thematic appropriateness, but that’s basically irrelevant—we’ve been having those conversations for the better part of two or three decades at this point.

Poor behaviour is only acceptable because people in positions of authority continue to accept it. Couching the problem as “this genre has its issues” is lazy and reductive and passes the buck from staff enforcement of behavioural standards to some ineffable ‘theme’ problem.

@Ashkuri While that’s all true, and it may explain some of the behaviours seen in WoD games, it doesn’t make anything we’ve seen exclusive or even more prevalent in WoD when compared to other genres.

I’ve seen just as much egotistical bullshit from Lords and Ladies games, Star Wars games, Star Trek games… Alas, I’ve only heard about the kind of bullshit that happens on comic book games, but that’s a whole different kettle of sparrows.

WoD was simply one of the more popular genres in our corner of the hobby for an extended period, so we have a stronger institutional memory of the problems.

@Lemon-Fox said in Numetal/Retromux:

@Ashkuri All of this is why I don’t play WOD at all. It seems pretty par for the course.

It’s really no better nor worse than any other genre, there’s shitfuckery everywhere.

@Prototart said in Numetal/Retromux:

@catzilla

That’s all well and good if you’re a normal, heathy, functional adult, but what about the rest of us

@MisterBoring said in Numetal/Retromux:

I’m suggesting that sometimes, PC leadership (especially in a WoD game) is bad, and needs to be ICly dealt with.

Usually, it needs to be OOCly dealt with. 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.

It’s far more rare for PC leadership to be bad intentionally, to create that tension and interesting story. Because, typically, the type to seek out that kind of power don’t come with the intention of losing it.

@somasatori said in Numetal/Retromux:

What was her full, unmarried name again?

Мамочка.

@Aria Hey. I was perfectly okay for approximately 37 minutes on Thursday, January 15th, 1987, between 00:04 and 00:41.

Just picture the prat in your tabletop group who whines “but it’s what my character would do” becomes your supervisor at work. That’s the level of shitfuckery we’re talking about here—I don’t have the exact same experience as Gashly but it’s been going on in WoD (at least) for the past coughcoughcough decades that we all know the dance steps.

@MisterBoring said in Numetal/Retromux:

@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.

There’s a big difference between characters acting against their own interests to tell a good story, and a player being forced to play a character acting against their own interests to get any participation at all. One is storytelling, the other is denying player agency.

@Artemis said in Scenes within Scenes:

I think it can get annoying if people are using them in bad faith

I think this right here underpins a great many negative experiences with coded systems designed with the intent to enhance the experience, or compensate for limitations of the time. They’re not inherently bad; they’re just often poorly used, or of an era where they aren’t required any longer but are kept around for the sake of nostalgic completeness’ sake.

@Roz One could hypothetically have all the tabletalk ‘scenes’ logged and filed as sub-scenes under/linked to the main scene. Though I imagine it’d be a bit of a bugger figuring out what the tabletalk scenes are reacting to… but I’ll leave that to the people who read logs for fun.

@Gashlycrumb said in Numetal/Retromux:

You’re not supposed to be able to maintain power by making everyone refuse to cooperate with you.

Ah, the <insert political party> gambit.

@MisterBoring said in Numetal/Retromux:

@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 guess it’d depend on whether they’re doing that to the characters or to the players. Given it’s PC leadership in WoD, it could be either or both.

@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

Common Camarilla L.

@Roz I fear any time we speak of generalities in MUing we’re going to have to have “Except on Arx” as a meme—like Crash Course World History’s near-infamous Except The Mongols crash-cut (as they are the exception to so many of history’s expectations).