Definitely craving something in the horror-adjacent urban fantasy space - CoD, Unknown Armies, Curseborne, anything like that would be great.

My forever-want is gaslamp fantasy with a real sense of Victorian authenticity. Not necessarily “perfectly historically accurate”, but made by someone who understands what the social conflicts of the era were for the place they’re setting it, and has a real reason to set a game in THIS place and THIS time, with supernatural/fantasy elements that really lean into it. Spiritualism, for example – hell, something set in the Burned Over District would be great fun.

I evaded a LOT of minimum age requirements as a teenager, I admit. But I think it’s perfectly valid to want an adults-only experience (even if I also think it’s healthy to acknowledge that it’s more an adults-and-people-good-at-acting-adult only space, instead).

I do not want to give my government ID to anyone over a game. Not least of which because some people are crazy and some of these crazy people run games.

Annnnd banned. Sorry about that, folks.

@Faraday said in Staff Bits Linking Handles:

@bear_necessities said in Staff Bits Linking Handles:

If you don’t have a handle, you have something to hide, and my brows immediately raise.

As the creator of the handle system, this kind of bothers me. The system was never intended to pressure people into identifying themselves across games. There has been enough stalking, creeping, and other shenanigans in the MU community (and the internet at large) that I don’t think anyone owes anyone else their OOC identity. Ever. Staff included.

That’s why even Ares games have a built-in alternative method for alt tracking that doesn’t require a player handle.

It’s meant to be a fun tool for those who choose to use it. I’m not a fan of it being held against those who don’t.

(Also in practical terms a creeper can just make a new handle, so I’m not sure what it gains you really.)

I never have a handle!

I don’t have anything to hide. It’s just a combination of a) I’m lazy and I don’t really like metaconnections between games, and b) I enjoy being able to have a little bit of a “fresh start” in a new game, where I can settle into a character without people bringing up previous characters.

Opinions may differ, but I don’t believe I’m a problem player–some people might avoid me, for sure, but I’m happy to tell anyone who I was in conversation or whatever, if I remember, but I do like it to be information I choose to share with people as opposed to information that is just automatically linked to me.

@BurnNotice said in MU Peeves Thread:

@Yam Imagine a horror game where seven out of every ten characters ICly are this person and they all do it at each other all the time and you have my peeve.

Have all my upvotes. I only have one. But you have it.

I want a robust system that lets me do Cool Things. I’ve been trying out various system-light games over the last couple of years, and even in a tabletop environment, I really want a game where I know what resources I have, what skills make my character unique, and a bit of randomness to keep the tension high.

@bear_necessities said in When is the last time you played?:

@catzilla said in When is the last time you played?:

run a silly one shot that will (probably) not have an effect on the setting.

so, curious, how could a game get you to run a plot that could have an effect on the setting, affect the metaplot or change the world in some sort of way? Is it just as simple as keeping that “You can do whatever you want here as long as it doesn’t break the world” on the tin or would you need something else?

I’m not @catzilla but here’s my list:

1. Don’t yell at me for doing it.
2. No OOCly hidden lore. On a personal level, I become a lot (A LOT) less likely to run things once I feel like there’s a chance I’ll step on the metaplot’s toes or trip over hidden lore that I don’t know and therefore don’t know to account for. Gives me Big anxiety. I might be the only one!
3. Work with me to figure out HOW it will change the world. Don’t just stick the results in the memory hole, OR make all the consequences bad ones. I’m not going to run things if “change the world” always means “screw over the PCs or make the world worse”.
4. Honestly, just…work with me. I’d love to have staff to talk with plots about, brainstorm with, or just have an idea of things they’d like to see PCs have opportunities to do.

Give me those things, and I am a plot-running bunny. It doesn’t take anything else (other than the things that I need to “hook” into a game in the first place), but I will admit that I do like bennies. I don’t think XP is the best idea, but it’s nice to get. Even something that’s totally OOC like players saying, “Hey, that was fun,” and, er, actually showing up, on time, ready to play the plot that was advertised? That works.

@junipersky Ugh! Sorry you had to deal with that.

@junipersky said in RL Peeves:

People being late for appointments but not calling or texting ahead to let us know.

This is so fucking rude! I do not understand why people can’t respect other people’s time at least enough to let someone know if you’re running late. Things happen, we know it. But don’t leave me twiddling my thumbs with no idea if I should hang out for another twenty minutes or if I’ve been ghosted…usually for a meeting THEY asked for.

It sounds like it’s largely about good sportsmanship and deciding on an OOC level to poison an IC victory of another player so that it’s a misery to actually engage with it. It’s not really about “pacifism” so much as someone just not being a good sport and setting out to make other players’ experience worse because they didn’t get what they wanted how they wanted it.

Although it definitely does bring up memories of the time when we invited a new player to our post-apocalyptic Shadowrun game and when we didn’t go along with what his character wanted, he suicided that character, then made a new character who was an “avowed pacifist” and ruined our attempt to ambush some targets because “he wanted to stop the violence”.

We uninvited him, obviously. Sometimes a person just doesn’t fit with a group or isn’t capable of playing nicely with others. I suspect it’s less about it being PvP and more about just some people don’t get that it’s obnoxious to set out to ruin other people’s experience because things didn’t go as you wanted.

@Roadspike said in Non-toxic PvP:

@Kestrel said in Non-toxic PvP:

One system I’ve been thinking about which I’d like some feedback on:

I think that this is incentivizing the wrong behavior. I think the behavior that you want to incentivize for both CvC and PvP conflict is proportional response. One of the issues with it that I’ve seen is when one character “wrongs” another, the second character (or player) turns their response up to 11 and immediately goes for the kill in order to remove the threat. That might be an effective strategy, but it doesn’t tell an interesting story.

I would find ways to incentivize (whether through XP, FS3 Luck points, public acclaim, or whatever) minor escalation that furthers the story rather than ends it. If someone says something nasty about your outfit at a gala, you don’t send a herd of cattle stampeding through their next gala, you bribe their modiste and have their next dress be the wrong shade or cut.

From a PvP perspective, that leaves the other character to respond and perhaps defeat your character… but from a CvC perspective, it leaves the other character still with the power and influence to continue telling the story with your character.

At one point, I had been kicking around the idea of an escalating relationship system that would work for both friendship/allies and enemies/rivals, where if you and the other player agreed that your characters were in that relationship, you would get a series of benefits based on the length and depth of that relationship, where some of the greatest rewards would come from the biggest sacrifice - i.e. when you lost a major conflict with your Rival, you would get some significant meta-bennies (what those were would really need to be worked out on a theme basis) so long as you accepted the loss gracefully on an OOC level.

I never got as far as fully mechanizing it, but I do like the idea of incentivizing difficult relationships. (On the allies side, the benefits came from taking risks or losses to help your ally/friend.)

One of the issues which hasn’t been brought up yet is “who is involved”.

Because, honestly, I’ve had more problems in IC conflict from people who weren’t involved but now are sticking their oars in without anyone requesting their “help” than I have from straight conflict. Two characters have a bar fight or an argument, and both players are fine with it, but suddenly five other characters all want to jump in and make it a much Bigger Thing than it needed to be, and usually they’re nowhere near as respectful of other players as the original conflict-folks were.

That’s where a lot of PvP resentment and clusterfucks come from, in my experience, and neither of the original folks have any control over what those players do, even when it pretty much ruins what WAS a fun, rich conflict plot.

@somasatori said in Numetal/Retromux:

Someone once told me (paraphrased) that the primary difference between maintaining OOC respect for your fellow players after a PVP/tense situation at a LARP and maintaining OOC respect and kindness towards your fellow MUSHers in the same situation is that MUSHers are not obligated to sit in a booth with each other at IHOP at 2am after we’ve finished our scenes.

Anonymity can be a real motivator in being a serious asshole towards others – which is interesting, because I’m fairly certain we’ve all known each other (or of each other) for the better part of a decade (which is perhaps also what leads to PVP situations).

That said, PVP is a difficult one. On one hand, if you explicitly prohibit PVP in a WoD environment, it takes some of the bite out of inter-sphere relations. On the other hand, allowing for a no-holds-barred environment will make the game – from examples I’ve seen – into a tedious free-for-all. I’m not sure if it’s just my perception based on the people I talk to, but I feel like interest in PVP has dropped off in the last little while.

I used to be in a gaming club in college where a whole lot of people were Mind’s Eye Theatre players. For my money, I’d say there’s not a whole lot of difference in toxicity: lots of vicious personal enmity, gossip, blurring of OOC/IC boundaries, sexual harassment, sexual assault, and cheating. Having to look people in the face afterwards didn’t really seem to help any of it.

Big things for me:

1. Is the house rule clearly explained so I know how it is likely to affect my play?
2. Does it pass the “smell test”? Which is to say, when I read the rule, can I see what it’s trying to do, do I agree with what it’s trying to do, and do I think it will actually accomplish that? (And, honestly? WoD/CoD generally DOES need a little more houseruling than it gets when trying to blend spheres that have conflicting powers/themes/foci.)
3. Do I think it’ll be fun and fair to all players?

If those three things are a yes, then I’m willing to run with it. When you’re talking about big changes–adding or removing or completely rehauling a system like pledges or whatever–then I do want the new rules to maintain the theme and appeal of the game for me. Like, HR rules to streamline making spirits and how they interact with the world from the rather complicated setup in CoD? Sure, I’m in, as long as spirits are still CoD spirits in recognizable ways.

@Pavel said in Scenes within Scenes:

In my experience, it’s not even the case that the code is used to avoid people interrupting; it’s to avoid people having to keep track of fifty people’s poses to find the people their PC is closest to. If there are twenty or so people in a scene, it’s legitimately difficult for some of us to keep track of what’s going on, with places the ‘main’ scene turns into a bit of a pantomime, and the places scene is where we actually do the bulk of the RP—occasionally stopping to shout ‘he’s behind you’ to the main stage.

It’s a surprisingly elegant solution to that problem.

Yeah, this is what I like places for. I do not mind large scenes; I can actually really enjoy a large scene, even an announcements-and-meeting scene! But I want to have a sense of being able to RP with a smaller group WITHIN that space without having to always worry about missing poses or spamming the greater room (since a small conversation is likely to go faster than the larger scene).

Places help keep me engaged and on track. I’d want any replacement for them to be able to tick those boxes. (I get why Ares can’t, and I can’t even imagine the nightmare it’d be for logging.)

@KarmaBum said in Scenes within Scenes:

@Roadspike said in Scenes within Scenes:

If it’s a one-way scene that again, can’t be interrupted? Don’t make it a scene! I’m sure we’ve all been in plenty of scenes where we thought, “This didn’t need to be a scene, it could’ve been a post/vignette/scene-set.” So don’t make them scenes. Have the GM post up their too-important-to-be-interrupted scene as a Vignette, and then have the actual scene be everyone’s reaction to it afterwards. You know, when people can actually interact with each other without interrupting.

Shouldn’t the solution be to find a way to make it more interactive? Like, if the King is making a proclamation that affects all the PCs, wouldn’t you want that scene to be something people show up to?

Even if they know they can’t stop the speech, can’t they RP trying? Throw the ST a curveball and bring a rotten tomato and wind up getting arrested?

It seems like the assumption of “all the PCs show and watch like good boys & girls” may make it easier for the ST, but it’s not giving characters much room to maneuver.

Honestly?

No. Please don’t do this. It’s not fun for anyone but the troublemaker, and as much as large scenes with announcements can be trying, they become five thousand times worse when people decide they want to make it “exciting” by acting like dipshits so that maybe Leader Daddy/Mommy will spank them and justify their hate boner.

It’s a bit different if a PC has a real stake/influence in what’s going on - if someone announces that they’re going to be taking over X business or attacking Y faction, then obviously I expect X and Y to raise an immediate ruckus. But keep the edgy tomato-throwers as far away as possible.

Or be as snarky as your heart’s content…at a place where the rest of the scene doesn’t have to deal with it.

I feel like there were a few games – Star Trek games, maybe? Back in the Days of Yore that had where you could spectate scenes in viewing rooms - like watch an Away Team get into wacky adventures. I wouldn’t mind that sort of set up for the Big Scene People Need To Be At…but honestly, traditional places are more flexible.

You can get up from one place and find another. You can choose to pose to the ‘bigger’ scene and so can other people at other places, so it’s not really posing to an empty room. It honestly works pretty well, even if it’s not 100% ideal.

In Ares, some games tried to emulate it with having multiple rooms per scene that represented areas you could move to, which isn’t a horrible workaround, but still a bit clumsy.

Very much a fan of traditional places. If we MUST have large scenes where a few key characters are going to Do Stuff and the rest of the characters need to sit there and watch, then at least give me the opportunity to RP with a few people while watching without spamming the rest of the scene.

Hate Ares places system because it doesn’t fix the main thing I want from tabletalk - reducing the number of poses I see that I don’t need to react to and making it easier for me to keep up with the poses my character is focusing on.

For me, it’s all about…matching energy.

I’m typically an enthusiastic player. I’ll be out there, approaching people, trying to set up scenes, I’ve got ideas for small scenes or PrPs, and my character has goals and things they want to accomplish.

But that takes energy, which I get back from feeling other people’s enthusiasm coming back to me. In poses, in reaching out with ideas or wanting scenes, in responses from staff, in plotty scenes that seem to accomplish something.

If the energy is off balance, especially if I’m bleeding out more than I’m getting back, then I’m going to end up drifting away. Usually, I realize I’m done with a game when I haven’t logged on in 3-5 days and I realize…I don’t regret it.

But it’s all about the energy exchange, not really about the completeness of the story or the structure of the game itself. When I log on, do I feel like my excitement is matched by other players/staff? If yes? I’m locked in for whatever is going on. If no? I’ll drift away.