Posts made by Polk

I forget the exact terminology, but Ari Corsetina was secretly the human pawn of some great old one. He was saved from the pirates who attacked the ship he served on, and threw him overboard, by a tentacle monster who saved him and then fought on his behalf to give him command of the ship.

The way I interpreted this, and played it, was to say look, Ari’s just a regular guy. He’s a man with a young family, who has to spend long periods away from them to provide for them. He’s a good, loyal guy who sacrifices of himself for others.

He’s not some dashing action hero. I’d say he’s comparable with a guy like Finn in Star Wars. He doesn’t have the special powers, but he’s dragged into all of this, and it tests him.

He eventually gets an inkling that Mirari Corsetina, his daughter, is mixed in with this, that Belladonna Pravus is mixed in with all of this. That everyone he works for, and fights for, and loves and respects, is benefiting from these deep dark powers.

And that power also wants him, and he can feel is watching him with its possibly-malevolent desires, every time he goes out to sea.

What do you do if you’re Ari in this spot? Your wife is dead. Your daughter is all you have left of your old life, and she’s somehow come through everything to a position of influence, comfort, and success. Are you really going to do anything that could possibly take that from her? Of course not.

Or Belladonna. The Pravus family was reaching new heights, and they’ve been very good to you. Are you going to betray them, or undermine them? No!

So what do you do if you’re Ari? You gratefully accept the Knighthood you are given. You quietly watch proudly your daughter do her thing. You serve your lords and ladies.

And when the burden of being watches, and courted, and groomed for some inhuman purpose is too much, you drink.

Mirari’s adopted sister kept stores of wine for trade. Ari frequently broke into those, because it was all he could do.

When he died, he died sacrificing himself at sea, in battle, for family and lords. The beings watching him lashed out when he died, but it was too late. He was at peace, having served those he cared for with all he had.

@mietze I wish more thought as you do.

@mietze I’ve run into players in the past who were frustrated because nobody wanted to play with them. I feel really bad about that sometimes so what will sometimes do is coach those players.

I can tell they don’t really know how to write. They come into this hobby for the role play and the socialization, not from a more text-based background. And well, they can’t write.

So I try to coach. The advice I usually give is: mind your spelling, mind your punctuation, and in every pose try to both respond/react to things other people did, AND do things that others could react to.

It’s so often that people will write very self-centric poses not because they’re self-centered people, but because they don’t know how to do this.

And it makes me happy when this coaching works, and I get told that it’s having ani mpact, they’re having more fun in a game.

The ability to write isn’t everything. But knowing the tricks for how to write in a MUSH, sure helps a lot.

I’m heavily influenced by Bill Amend in how I make MUSH characters.

He was once asked which of the characters in Foxtrot was him. His answer was, all of them. He put something of himself into the entire family.

I put something of myself into characters I make. It’s the easiest way I have to make them human.

Stealing a character is no trivial thing.

Direct copying is illegal in virtually every country under the Berne Convention and laws passed in most countries in the world to implement the treaty.

More subtle copying (changing a word here and there, but keeping most of the words/the structure) also can count. In the US the rule of “substantial similarity” applies. Making obvious attempts to EVADE detection are a factor to PROVE infringement, in fact.

Delete it. Warn the infringer. Ban on repeated infringements.

@GF I’m not the person you asked, but I have the same preferences stated.

And well, I don’t think that allowing a character to become that powerful is a good idea. I think a well-run game has to make XP spends make sense, regardless of the rate of XP gain.

So nah, I wouldn’t enjoy a game where everyone became so powerful that nothing challenged anymore. Every obstacle could be overcome easily.

But I don’t think the generational idea is the way I’d enjoy solving that.

Not that long ago I had a character in a plot where character death was a real possibility. On my commutes home I would sometimes think about how I would pose him getting killed.

Because it was a supernatural game, there were supernatural factors involved and I could bring in a ‘third party’ who would be deeply affected by the character’s death.

Basically, if you know Mage the Ascension, his avatar (weak, one dot) was going to panic about his premature death not giving it a chance to grow and prosper. So it was to try to revive him by showing him probable futures of his children and grandchildren as motivation to Get Up and Fight. However, the effect was going to be that it soothed the fear and panic he felt while dying.

One pose, the character’s story completed.

It was intense in my head (still is really, months later, though it never happened) and I would get choked up about it. But I also completely break down at the end of Link’s Awakening.

I want stories to move me, and I’m not ashamed of it when it happens.

@Wizz It’s like an online, multiplayer version of the old Space Trader PalmOS game, with actual role play involved.

@Jennkryst said in As a PLAYER, how many staff would be ideal in a game?:

I want more staff than players, so when the player nagging inevitably burns someone out, there are plenty of replacements available until the burn-out fully recuperates.

I now know I want staffers who are allowed to have player bits, so it’s not like pulling teeth to recruit new staffers when breaks happen.

I’m curious how many of those 24 people who voted 30+ have run a game that big, and know the difficulties involved.

I’ve been adjacent to running a big game and it’s not as easy as it sounds.

@Gashlycrumb said in IC Consequences and OOC Acceptance:

@Solstice said in IC Consequences and OOC Acceptance:

Mostly, PvP punishes you for giving a shit.

Hahah. Yeah.

Hell, a lot of dealings regarding ‘OOC Acceptance’ do too. There’s a tendancy to vilify player investment as not chill and reward indifferent players as chill.

Over-investment is certainly a thing, but there’s also some cases where it seems like that the meta-game of the MU is to get what you want by making yourself look like the more easy-going and thus ‘better’ player in any conflict.

Abelard: “Uh, hey Awesome, Bridget RPed setting fire to my PC’s lawn. At that IC time he would have been at home staring out the front window with an uzi in his lap, like he does every night, but at the OOC time I was at work. So this is kind of a problem.”

AwesomeStaffer: “All right, how do you guys want to resolve this?”

Bridget: “Oh, I’m fine with anything. Whatever you like.”

Abelard: “Cool, how about option A?”

Bridget: “That would damage my character’s shoes, and isn’t acceptable to me.”

AwesomeStaffer: “What would work?”

Bridget: “How about I set fire to Abelard’s lawn and he just sat there? But you know, I’m good with anything.”

Abelard: “Abelard’s lawn is supremely important to him and he just would not behave that way. How about option B?”

Bridget: “That would delete all our scenes of planning to burn Abelard’s lawn, so, no.”

AwesomeStaffer: “You can’t have option A or B. Abelard, what do you want to do?”

Abelard: “… I don’t know.”

AwesomeStaffer: “You’re being a pain.”

This sort of thing is precisely why ‘simulationism’ is a dirty word with me. This veers toward the very worst of the RPI MUD experience, which is some of the most toxic stuff in the entire hobby.

@Pyrephox Yup. a Social Contract type framework is probably even more important for PvP than it is for more traditional STed roleplay. https://shatteredmu.com/wiki/ooc:policies

@Faraday said in IC Consequences and OOC Acceptance:

I just think you should be prepared for the fact that a great many MU players are consequence-averse, especially when those consequences are coming from fellow players and not imposed by staff. There’s a lot baked in to the culture to view it as PvP (player vs player) rather than as story-driven IC antagonism.

The way I think of it is, some people just want to hole up and tell their own story arcs. They don’t want to mess with you and they don’t want you messing with them.

But there are also players (fewer, but they exist in substantial numbers) who feel empty if they can’t “influence the grid” in some way. They want consequences to exist.

I feel like a game can thread the needle and appeal to both sets of players. But you have to be aware of the split.

At this point I can’t help but suspect the player age thing is to allow a specific person to play. A relative, or the game runner personally.

The issue of underage characters also comes up in the World of Darkness. Canonically, Garou first changes hit with puberty, so your typical CG-level Cliath should be around 16 years old.

That can be fine in a movie, or a book, or in tabletop play. But on a MUSH it just gets ruined by the minority.

So I think you just have to adapt the setting to fit the needs of a MUSH. Stretch it, change it, rewrite it. Or House Rule things. Or anything.

If your setting can’t be adapted, it won’t work as a public MUSH.

In the case of Star Wars, yeah, it was stated canonically that kids started Jedi training very young. But they were started as initiates, and then became younglings (the younglings!). By the time they reached Padawan status not all were teenagers anymore, even. So even if you want Padawan PCs, they can still be required 18+ and not even stretch the setting.

@kalakh Heh. I absolutely get why people want to flirt with the obvious baddies. Ari was pretty much set up to do so, as some baddies were SHOWERING him with gifts and affection.

But, since Ari wasn’t a complete crazy person, I had him unnerved by it all, and turning to heavy drinking instead of just endangering everything and everyone he cared about to go play with the shiny NPCs.

Gotta temper the Cool Stuff factor with giving your PC at least a shred of common sense.

@Pavel I don’t intend to start asking for permission.

@hellfrog said in Staff Capacity:

@Polk this is amazing

tell us more about your thoughts on staffing WoD games

I mean, if you want to be constructive, I’m happy to. But we both know this post wasn’t made with a constructive intent.

@SpaceKhomeini I still feel like OOC Masquerade derives from the old RPI MUD mindset, where literally any communication OOC about anything about IC events constitutes cheating and can be a ban worthy offense.

Whereas in MUSHes, particularly post-Everquest, the people left generally have more of a collaborative, tabletop mindset. Around the tabletop you know who the other players and the storyteller are, and you’re working together to make something fun.

In an RPI MUD, if I reach out to a player to choreograph the starting of a rivalry, I’m gonna get banned. In a Tabletoppy MUSH, I’m going to have a great time.

I still want to see a game with open character sheets.