@Roz She isn’t staff, at least, so that’s something.
Don’t forget we moved!
https://brandmu.day/
Posts made by renaveleigh
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RE: Comic Games Are Still Fun!
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RE: Comic Games Are Still Fun!
I mean, listen, we can debate the merits of where precisely the lines should be drawn in specific real or hypothetical situations like this one all day. That’s fine and fair.
But divorced from all of that, my gut feeling is that Rogue is some kind of weirdo chud or consciously covering for the feelings of one, so while I’m happy to not get wildly political in public, I am also never not going to find it funny that her knee-jerk reaction was to clutch her pearls over the very controversial statement that Alex Jones Is Bad, Actually.
I’ll also note that there are players who have cart blanche to whine about how sensitive people are nowadays, and how there are too many genders, and pronouns are hard - all of which feel like more inherently political dog whistles and/or statements than acknowledging that a lying scam artist is a lying scam artist - so while I do appreciate the value of not talking about certain subjects because they can cause friction, it’d be nice if that standard was applied more evenly.
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RE: Comic Games Are Still Fun!
The context for the Alex Jones stuff:
<Xaviers-OOC> Teacher Alex Summers wishes he was a telepath, he’d fix the world.
<Xaviers-OOC> College S. Julio Richter says, “I wish I could forget that Alex Jones exists.”
<Xaviers-OOC> Resident Doug Ramsey says, “Eh, well.”
<Xaviers-OOC> College S. Julio Richter says, “Anyone for arpee?”
<Xaviers-OOC> Teacher Rogue says, “Probably best to just realize there’s a lot of people in the world you probably would like not to exist.”
<Xaviers-OOC> Resident Doug Ramsey says, “Is it with Alex Jones?”
<Xaviers-OOC> College S. Julio Richter says, “Fair enough Rogue.”
<Xaviers-OOC> Resident Talia Wagner says, “I listen to far too much Knowledge Fight, which started out as two comedians tearing down his bs and making jokes and now one of them made a deposition at one of the sandy hook trials and is regarded as the foremost expert on his grift. It’s still hilarious.”
<Xaviers-OOC> Guest Lorna Dane says, “Some people just shouldn’t be allowed to have platforms, alas”
<Xaviers-OOC> Teacher Rogue says, “Lets talk about something else.”
<Xaviers-OOC> College S. Julio Richter says, “Dongers?”
<Xaviers-OOC> Resident Doug Ramsey says, “I went to an edible book festival earlier and made myself sick. I got Bookitis :(”
<Xaviers-OOC> Guest Lorna Dane says, “I don’t think ‘people who deny horrific tragedies and encourage others to hate minorities’ is controversial, but sure!”
<Xaviers-OOC> College S. Julio Richter says, “Really?”
<Xaviers-OOC> Teacher Rogue says, “Poor Doug.”
<Xaviers-OOC> Guest Lorna Dane says, “*are bad, even.”
<Xaviers-OOC> College S. Julio Richter hugs Lorna
<Xaviers-OOC> College S. Patty Sloan says, “>.> This is why books are a nasty habit to get into :p”
<Xaviers-OOC> Teacher Rogue says, “See, Lorna, you turning it in to that, is what I’m trying to avoid.”
<Xaviers-OOC> Guest Lorna Dane just sips on her tea and writes her pose.
<Xaviers-OOC> Teacher Rogue says, “Excellent plan.”
<Xaviers-OOC> Resident Betsy Braddock grins and protecc Lorna with her alt.
<Xaviers-OOC> Resident Betsy Braddock says, “Since apparently Bishop can’t handle Philly girls.”And then, a bit later that day, I made a petty crack in reference to it:
<X-Men-OOC> \/// SNIKT Logan says, “I’m going to this UN thing. Any other X-Men want to pretend we’re part of the world and come with me?”
<X-Men-OOC> GreenPeace Lorna Dane says, “Sorry, I just got done fight Hydra outside. :(”
<X-Men-OOC> GreenPeace Lorna Dane says, “Not to get too political by talking about fighting nazis or anything”Making a remark about it wasn’t really the best choice, I don’t mind owning that. It’s still really strange to me, though, for the reasons outlined by @Apos/the reason I tried to get at: Alex Jones is pretty objectively a shitty, fucked up person. It’s weird that just saying that much is controversial and considered political, because one would think that if someone is now legally proven to be an entertainer/liar who makes shit up to scare people into paying him money, acknowledging it ought to be fair game.
But it’s not my monkey or circus, so, whatever!
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RE: Comic Games Are Still Fun!
@Roz It was in the post that I, uh, deleted after getting enough perspective to feel uncomfortable with dumping a large quantity of barely contained spite directed at one person, in public.
(thank you, @bored!)
I’ll edit this post with that snippet when I’m at a keyboard though. Sorry for the confusion.
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RE: Comic Games Are Still Fun!
@Apos said in Comic Games Are Still Fun!:
Politics rules really aren’t about what is considered politics. They are about what is considered controversial politically, and what is likely to start a fight, and to avoid anything that’s going to start an argument or make someone feel unwelcome.
It is manifestly obvious that Alex Jones is a far right wing extremist and conspiracy theorist. I don’t think anyone could look at him saying Sandy Hook was funded by the Democratic Party and George Soros as a false flag operation and think that is in any way apolitical. But what I think feels off is that he’s so far outside the normal range that condemning him should not be considered controversial politically, anymore than claiming that really hateful ideologies are bad. It’s just too uncomfortable a move of the Overton Window.
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RE: Comic Games Are Still Fun!
It confused me in the moment, and it still confuses me now. Making weird comments about there being too many pronouns is NOT politics as far as I’ve seen, mind you, which does help with figuring out where the line is.
I guess politics are in the eye of the beholder.
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RE: Comic Games Are Still Fun!
@bored said in Comic Games Are Still Fun!:
@renaveleigh re: the Xaviers stuff, this is tricky. I think your frustration is valid but that you’re probably misreading things a little, including the idea that Shakespeare is actively protecting Rogue.
So, for the record, I don’t have any opinion one way or the other on whether Shakespeare is protecting Rogue. That was Prototart, above me.
My understanding is that they’ve long since fallen out. Shakespeare’s only friends are her ever-shrinking personal RP circle.
I clicked over to the MSB log linked up top and reading myself talking to Ruby about UH is mind-numbing. So I appreciate frustration in dealing with her. But Jean & her alts and Nathan & his alts are among the tiny few players left on the whole damn game running actual comic book stuff with any kind of regularity or quality, and they’ve both seem like shockingly sane, adult people in every interaction I’ve had. It’s notable you give him a pass while turning on her, even though you admit he fundamentally agreed with them.
Thank you for being straight up, first of all. I wanted to try and be as honest as possible about things from my perspective, including the parts that make me look bad, because at this point, I’m old enough to at least attempt to be, like, mildly self-aware about being way less than perfect.
I didn’t really focus on Nathan’s part because - while I don’t agree with his POV on things, and do believe that it plays right into the same theme of ignoring the actual, stated issues as the posts that I chose to focus on - Nathan isn’t a leader of the group, as far as I know. My primary point, and the reason that I give any kind of a shit at all about random people not being able to behave themselves, is that the leaders of the group seeing a post from the admin citing recent complaints about the atmosphere and responding by first ignoring it, then turning around and biting at those who speak up about their concerns is, well. Concerning. I was less interested in interrogating every single dissenting opinion than I was in focusing, specifically, on the screwed up attitudes that seemed liable to conflict with my own broader self-interest of having a functional X-Men/Xavier group to interact with. I don’t care if someone’s got a different opinion from me; that’s fine. It’s not something worth worrying about in and of itself, here.
So it comes across as personal vendetta & hate directed at Rogue/Ruby, and anyone else who dares be friends with her. In this, I urge you to reconsider your zeal, because it’s easy to pick a side in these these fights, stake your hill to die on, and end up not looking much better than the other guy (I used to do this a lot). For instance, that log involves 1) people talking politics, which they’re not supposed to, 2) Rogue asking them to stop, and 3) you sniping back at her instead of stopping when asked. To be clear, that means Rogue’s the one following the rules in the Shakespeare post you supposedly agree with, and you’re the one violating it, right? So are you toxic? Or would you agree with Jean/Nathan that maybe people just sometimes get emotional.
I would definitely agree that - objectively speaking - I should not have sniped at her about Alex Jones; that came from a place of genuine bewilderment at the premise that saying he’s a bad person could be offensive, more than any real malice towards her. Not talking about anything political on the channel is a rule that I’m happy to abide by.
And I would also agree that people do get emotional! I broke the post buffer limit here because I got emotional. I’m not an unbiased actor here in the slightest, and I don’t mind copping to that because beyond whatever lingering distrust I might have had for Rogue/Ruby based on past exposure, I have felt uneasy and uncomfortable in the wake of my own hubris earning me a faceful of gaslighting directly from her. I think that multiple things can be true: it’s true that people can be emotional and act rashly because of it; it’s true that more open communication would be a great way to avoid interpersonal issues, because they’re rarely so serious that they should need more than that to resolve them; it’s true that I do not care for Rogue’s player in the slightest; and it’s true that her approach to managing a large group of people is, to say the least, flawed to the point that it’s worth commenting on.
Not to come down too harshly, and to tie it back, I’m going to reiterate that this is all Shakespeare’s fault. Shakes is 100% checked out, and has been for much of the game’s existence. Without knowing all the grudges, I can imagine that there are many valid and real things that you are upset about, that Jean is upset about, that Warren is upset about, etc., but that all of them have been left to fester because Shakespeare will never take action on anything, ever. That’s really something you have to internalize, especially when taking her ‘side’ in that argument. Understand, that post is a nothingburger, and it’s her usual MO of shifting blame to the players rather than taking any responsibility for staff action.
I think that you’re broadly right that this is a lot of energy expended over something that isn’t worth the trouble, and going forward, I’m not going to sweat this stuff. It’s pointless: at the end of the day, all I really want to do is eat hot chips, be magnetic, charge my phone, and compact Purifiers. I reacted so strongly here, I think, because while I saw the initial incident that spurred that post, I wasn’t around while it was happening; it bothered me then, but I let it go. So once it was clear that nobody was going to address any of the various elephants on the room, I got frustrated and started Posting.
Whatever comes of Xavier’s and the X-Men and such as a whole is super not my problem. I hope things keep working out well for them, and am just gonna do my best to play with the people I do vibe with.
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RE: Comic Games Are Still Fun!
@Roz Thank you so much! I went through and fixed all the blocks. Spacing is off, but I will take that a million times over those unscrolling blocks.
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RE: Comic Games Are Still Fun!
Is there a better option than the code blocks for pasting long sections of text in a way that’ll offset it from the rest of a post? Annoyingly, they wrap just fine in the preview, but not in the actual live post.
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RE: Comic Games Are Still Fun!
@Prototart said in Comic Games Are Still Fun!:
@Popes said in Comic Games Are Still Fun!:
The current Xavier’s drama is hysterical, but I’m not on the channel, so I don’t have receipts. I know others do, because I’ve seen them.
Funniest shit.
fr, Rogue/Ruby having the audacity to pretend to be the adult in any room is seriously just the most deranged shit in the world I stg
I know for a fact people have involved Shakespeare in her shit but shocker nothing happens bc the game was literally made for her she is protected from on high and is subject to literally no rules at all
There was a much (much (much)) longer post here. After taking time to sit with it and think about it, I just am not comfortable with dedicating a manifesto’s worth of words to one person over this stuff, even if it’s one who I thoroughly dislike and distrust. It feels weird and gross. The highlights:
- The Xavier’s School group has a real fucked up atmosphere, to the point of making people drop characters to avoid it.
- The people in charge of the Xavier’s School group are fine with this, or at least willing to behave as if any and all issues faced by people who have dropped characters due to feeling uncomfortable with said atmosphere are solely the fault of those people.
- I really ought to work on controlling my temper, because I acted like an asshole in reacting to the above two points.
That said:
@Prototart is one hundred percent correct that Rogue/Ruby is an awful excuse for an ‘adult in the room’. She’s the sort of person who thinks it’s fine and normal to throw sexually tinged jokes at virtual strangers, then double down when they show signs of not appreciating it. She’s the kind of person who, from her position of acting as the volunteer organizer/coordinator for a large faction on a MUSH, is perfectly alright with dodging accountability by any means. She’s a habitual liar and gaslighter who is best given a wide berth.
I’ll leave my other related posts up because whatever, I feel less weird/gross about those ones.
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RE: Comic Games Are Still Fun!
@Apos said in Comic Games Are Still Fun!:
@renaveleigh said in Comic Games Are Still Fun!:
These are not serious people. These are not particularly GOOD people. These are not people who are equipped to acknowledge the contributions of anyone outside of their orthodoxy of mediocrity
okay okay but we’re talking about running a MU right, the bar is so low most people trip over it but I think any game runner would die of cringe if someone described them as a serious person because they ran an online roleplaying game well
Shit’s relative. ‘Serious’ for this dumb dying hobby is ‘does not perpetuate the abuse of people who choose to spend their time playing on an online roleplaying game’ and ‘will probably not behave like a raging asshole if disagreed with in any way’.
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RE: Comic Games Are Still Fun!
So, beyond the sins of HAM itself - of which there are clearly many! - I think it’s important to bear in mind that it’s just another link in what is swiftly becoming a chain of games created exclusively to house the right abusive staff and player figures.
Like Prototart said, Heroes Assembled MUSH was the result of the very same people who aided, abetted, and participating in sexually harassing and/or emotionally abusing others on United Heroes MUSH objecting to no longer being allowed to do so with the same impunity, or guarantee of safety from the same treatment they visited upon others. Crucially, its main driver - the aforementioned Chaucer, AKA Halicron around these parts, I believe - was someone well aware of the kind of place that United Heroes before finally leaving in protest-- because years prior to doing so, he’d already left in disgust and protest due to the entirely unrelated scandal in which Ditko’s abusive tendencies, and the rest of the United Heroes staff’s apathy towards the same was initially exposed. In doing so, he began nurturing the seed that would eventually bloom into his beloved thicket of a theme, but not without facing obstacles. Among the moderately sized group of players his morals apparently drove him to leave beside, the sentiment that his theme - which at one point attributed the entirety of the fictional African superstate of Wakanda’s technological prowess and bloodline connection to the special herb that empowers its rulers to the presence of a race of (predominantly white) alien colonizers crashing there in ancient times and interbreeding with the local populace, uplifting them into a hybrid race capable of fully accepting their gifts, alongside a host of other bizarre additions driven primarily by his simultaneously disdain for comic books and blind confidence in his own abilities - was in fact a confusing, unwieldy mess that would prove a detriment to incoming players not already familiar with its bare bones from previous exposure (or willing to overlook its egregious flaws due to kinship or other such factors) almost immediately drove him directly back to United Heroes for the run that would ultimately culminate in-- leaving, in disgust, because the same people who had already proven to be abusive shits were still abusive shits.
The main difference, of course, is that the second time around, he was happy to bring along some of the very same untrustworthy personalities who’d proven themselves abusive or supportive on the first go 'round, because this time they were his friends.
On Heroes Assembled MUSH, Halicron’s ~decade long pattern of being a player and occasional admin characterized primarily by narcissism neatly tucked beneath a veneer of personability reached what felt like a zenith. Beyond the behavior which Prototart outlined - his love of treating people who were interested in taking inspiration from comic books like idiots; his willingness to directly insult the ones he didn’t feel like processing apps from - he made a habit of refusing character claim requests (read: requests for the passwords of previously created character objects, so that players could go through the app process on those objects) from people who he felt ‘shouldn’t’ play those characters for whatever reasons he deemed fit, including feeling that they should ‘branch out’ and try someone in one of the two or three fiefdoms of the game he felt were worth exploring.
His takes on long-established women characters like Janet ‘The Wasp’ Van-Dyne seemed to stem primarily from his own natural ignorance of the source material combined with barely latent misogyny: Janet for example, a character mostly depicted as a fiesty, big-hearted and ballsy heroine with an empathic streak became a bitter billionaire drug addict with sociopathic tendencies under Halicron’s pen, a take which he was not only deeply proud of, but insisted was the only logical understanding of a character who dates back to 1963, despite it not lining up with any version of the character published between then and now.
When confronted - multiple times - with the news that two of his good friends (Vorpal, a player who inspired a generation of comic MUs to ban original characters for the express purpose of keeping him from bringing yet another iteration of the tiresome self-insert he has been playing since 2013 or so; and Wolfs, a player notorious in comic MU spaces for trying to coerce strangers into engaging with their latex fetishes) were responsible for bullying a long-standing player off of the game, his initial response was to get angry at me for bringing it up (publicly, granted); his subsequent response was to close an official complaint on the matter roughly five minutes after its submission with a tepid promise to look into it which was never again followed up on. Whether this is because he’s friends with these players, he disliked me for making A Problem out of it in the wrong way, he disliked the person being bullied, or some other, unforeseen factor, I obviously can’t say; I was never given any indication that he did indeed care, take the issue seriously, or say a word about it to any of the involved parties, though.
Why bring all of this up in a long-ass reply to a long-ass post venting about someone who has already flounced away from a game and inspired his cronies to do the same, poisoning the well as they go? Because like Prototart said, they’re gearing up to do it all over again. If there’s anything you take from anything that’s been said about this game, these people, and their future endeavors, please let it be this: do not indulge them. Do not waste your time and energy on a space that exists to give abusive people a fresh hunting ground. Do not confuse a game with explicit carve-outs…
Each player may have one character on +reserve. When a character opens or hits +idle, reserves are processed on a first come, first serve basis. The first player in line has one week to claim the character. At the end of a week, or if the player declines, the reserve goes to the next player in line. If no one claims the character, they are set Open and are available to app. There is a 24 hour window after opening to allow any interested party a chance to pitch for the recently opened character. The original player must wait one week before they can put a new +claim on the character. To +claim a reserve: *Player must not have any idle characters on their account. *OCs and NCs have a +kudos in the last 21 days. *Player must have sufficient space in their roster for the new character. +Interest Players may express interest in up to three characters at once. Reserves take priority over interest. Players may check to see if their character has any +interest flags. This means another player is potentially interested in playing the character. If these flagged characters start having issues with their activity or +kudos requirements, staff will approach the player to discuss whether or not the player wishes to retain the character. EFCs and MFCs must submit a plan of action to improve their activity in the next 60 days. This is primarily a tool for Staff to gauge interest among players in writing the character. ----- One of the things that will impact this system is how we're going to kind of overhaul the +idle system. Things are going to be handled on a case by case basis, and we aren't going to just reap a list of characters because they've hit idle and have a reserve. While I can't necessarily give any hard numbers yet, if someone has been playing a character for a long while (or alternatively, have been playing characters plural for a long while) without any issues, we will at the very least want to talk with that player before opening the character.
… to create exceptions to its activity rules for the benefit of staff and staff’s friends to either hold onto their own characters in circumstances when inactivity should lead to losing them, or claim desired characters from others on the grounds of expressed interest for one that is in any way conducive to cooperative storytelling. On at least two occasions, Chaucer has personally seen to it that players who claim characters played by one of his friends when they fall idle under Heroes Assembled’s similar ruleset for activity are banned soon after doing so; in one case, this meant ignoring multiple accounts of a player being a sex pest until they had the temerity to claim a character and post that they were new to that character, and planning to depict her in a gentler way than the previous player did, at which point the sex pestery was suddenly exposed and used as grounds for banning.
These are not serious people. These are not particularly GOOD people. These are not people who are equipped to acknowledge the contributions of anyone outside of their orthodoxy of mediocrity, and Halicron in particular has demonstrated a complete inability to serve as an unbiased, approachable, or even particularly useful staff member on every occasion he’s attempted it. I realize that this is not an audience that’s all that high on comic book games to begin with, but for any lurkers, or any occasional 4 color fiends out there: do not go there. Do not go. Break the chain and let it dangle uselessly until it rusts away.
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RE: Discussion - Excelsior
From our General FAQ:
Q: How do I get that one character I always play/have always wanted to play?
A: It depends. You can always ask us if we have plans for a specific character. If we do, we’ll let you know; if we don’t, it might be a character we’re really not interested in including. On the other hand, it could be a character we’re not too invested in but don’t mind bringing in. It’s a toss up. You’ll have to ask. Just remember that either way, the character will be written to fit in our world.I’m currently on the website without being logged in and the Character Openings board is locked, which makes it rather more difficult for a person without a character on the game to keep an eye out for those 48 hour pre-opening notices-- assuming that that is, indeed, where that information is posted. I couldn’t find it elsewhere, but I might not have looked enough.
I don’t have any particular dog in this race beyond being someone who periodically checks the roster for signs of someone who might be interesting to try, but it does seem a little counterintuitive to gate those opening notices to the existing players, given that the roster setup means prospective players without any appealing options otherwise have to scroll through all of the roster tabs every few days/weeks/(insert other interval here) in the hopes of seeing something that appeals to them. Being able to get some advance notice of character availability seems as if it would be a boon to anyone in that position.
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RE: Superhero MU*s
I wanted to offer something of substance instead of the glib comment that was originally here. Like every other game, Infinite Adventures has its pros and cons:
PRO: The playerbase is friendly and engaging on the whole, and a healthy number of them seem interested in running plots, creating RP for others without overtly cliquish behavior, and so forth.
PRO: Uranus in particular is, staff-wise, very invested in handling player relations issues and generating RP. For the cape circuit specifically, he does these things on a level noticeably beyond the norm for games these days.
PRO: The game is quite active thus far, with RP requests often being answered quickly and players in my admittedly limited experience being plenty open to being directly approached for play.
PRO: It is not required that players write apps from scratch: the staff will handle write ups upon request, allowing appers to make adjustments afterwards to taste. Given that the app process has been in a state of flux for most of the game’s life thus far, this is a definite boon for anyone who isn’t too particular about how their apps are written up.
CON: There doesn’t seem to be much in the way of organization or consistency behind the scenes. It’s not ENTIRELY unusual on these games to be asked to adjust things on already approved sheets days or weeks after the fact in the early phases of a game, as app requirements are finalized; it is however unusual for an approved, active character to be abruptly and without conversation be taken from their player and set as an NPC despite the player having numerous plot irons in the fire, and despite the admin in charge of their sphere claiming a lack of interest in said removal. It seems as if communication could use some shoring up, so as to keep everyone - staff AND players - on the same page.
CON: Because the game is new and has experienced a rapid growth over its brief lifespan thus far, it seems as if the head administrator in particular is in over his head, performing jobs that he isn’t especially suited to or comfortable with rather than delegating to the half a dozen or so other members of staff. Generally, I would suggest being very circumspect in dealing with him.
Overall, given that the pickings are pretty slim for active games that are not run primarily for the benefit of mediocre adult children and their toxic friends - as Heroes Assembled, the other major choice that doesn’t come with a ton of additional qualifiers - it would be difficult NOT to recommend Infinite Adventures. Despite a rocky experience in places, it’s overall got a lot of potential for people interested in mixed theme comic book roleplay with a ~Year 2 bent, and I recommend giving it a look and seeing what the playerbase has to offer; just bear in mind that the management still seems to be working some things out.
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RE: TV series gone awry
Westworld went from a beautiful and intricately crafted show in s1 to a parody of itself in s2 to a weird action-oriented side story in s3 to-- I mean, this current season has some potential, but the magic is long gone.
Once the showrunners decided that what people liked most and wanted more of was alternate time lines and identity-based twists, the show became entirely about those things for a spell, to its detriment-- and then attempted to simplify, missing the point in the other direction. I just want a pretty meditation on free will and the evils of capitalism guys, plz stop making me feel dumb for continuing to give you chances to provide
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RE: Comic Games Are Fun!
@Pavel Why do people play shitty WoD, Star Wars, or any other game in this hobby?
Because there aren’t any better options, their friends are there, and they intend to avoid as much of the shittiness as possible. This is not remotely unique.
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RE: Comic Games Are Fun!
@Roz said in Comic Games Are Fun!:
…probably doesn’t feel great to receive, but I don’t see an issue with the actual sentiment? It reads to me like “this particular concept would require particular time and investment from staff to work through to reach something that fits the balance of the game as it exists right now, and if we’re going to do that, we want it to be with a player who has more history on the game.”
I just wanted to butt in here to say that, like-- while there might be SOME validity to this sentiment on other kinds of games, the sort of comic book free-for-all which Heroes Assembled is just is not one of them.
‘You can’t play this character because you aren’t active enough’ makes sense in the context of someone wanting to play a vampire noble on a WOD game, or the head of a great house on Arx, or one of eight available FCs on a Star Wars game where FCs function more as quest givers and narrative support than PCs in their own right… but this is not in any way one of those games. This is a game where Prototart or ANY OTHER PLAYER, including brand new ones; including ones who cannot manage more than two garbled lines about how awesome they and they alone are per pose; including people who will or already do log in expressly to do one scene/month with a single other buddy then log out for the next 21/28 days to skirt activity rules could grab:
- Franklin Richards (superpowers: can do anything)
- Blue Marvel (superpowers: Superman, only with anti-matter powers and no kryptonite)
- Carnage (superpowers: completely irredeemable murderous sociopath with body horror knife bullshit)
- Ikaris (superpowers: Superman, only for some reason he also teleports and has the organic supercomputer the New Gods use which, itself, confers a ton of EXTRA abilities; no weaknesses except radion, which is extremely rare, and ‘running out of energy after a few hours of being Superman’)
- Spiral (superpowers: interdimensional teleportation, witchcraft, and bodymodding; completely nuts; no weaknesses)
- Black Adam (superpowers: Superman; no weaknesses except for, I guess, ‘saying his own name’; antisocial with a god complex)
- Exodus (superpowers: omega-level telekinesis, which means his is more powerful than any non-omega-grade telekinetic’s could ever possibly be; telepathy, teleportation, energy vampirism; yet another villain)
from the game’s roster and have them approved inside of about two minutes without having to submit a single word of any kind of application. ‘This particular concept doesn’t work for our game’ is one thing, and it’s perfectly valid; ‘this particular concept would require time and effort from our staff to suit game balance and we do not want to expend it because you are not active enough’ is ludicrous to the point of insult. It’s a hurdle that simply does not exist for anyone else on the game, and wouldn’t (by rights; Chaucer/Halicron has absolutely tried to decree who 'tart can and cannot play based on his own estimation of what’s right for her, which is why there is a genuine question as to what she, specifically, is allowed to app, as her experience shows that the answer is apparently not the same for her as it is for anyone else) exist for Prototart had she just grabbed a roster character; in fact, she only attempted to write up the character she did because the one she WANTED (Selene (superpowers: telepathic immortal vampire witch who has credibly fronted as a goddess; irredeemable sociopath; zero weaknesses)) is, in fact, currently held by a person who… logs in once every 28 days to do exactly one scene with the same one-two people which does nothing to generate or move RP for anyone else.
There’s nothing to protect, no effort required on behalf of staff beyond what is required to read an app: game balance simply is not a thing on a fully consent-based superhero game which includes fully powered Kryptonians, Green Lanterns, Jean Grey as the White Phoenix of the Crown, Dr. Doom, and characters like those listed above as fully playable, immediately accessible options; the truth of it is that a Spoiler who simply did not want to sell anything for anyone is equally as capable of ruining a scene with twinky behavior as any ‘overpowered’ character. There ARE games which make a conscious effort to ratchet down character power levels across the board, preferring a lower powered environment, and while there are places in the news files which suggest players ‘don’t app at the height of their powers’ to ‘preserve a sense of growth’ (paraphrased) there is no overarching ethos of trying to maintain a more modest power scale for the entire game; neither the staff nor the majority of players seem to have taken that idea to heart at all, here.
So.
All that said: for someone to submit an app for a character they’re interested in at least ATTEMPTING to play – a villain character, which the game has relatively few of – with a detailed explanation of what she means to do, proof of her reaching out to other players to coordinate with them, and how she means to work the character in a way which limits her ostensibly high power level; receive an enthusiastic concept approval; then a day later be told that actually, no, the character is just too powerful and would somehow unbalance a game full of characters heroic and villainous alike who are similar to or vastly beyond what she is capable of… it’s a bizarre whiplash to say the least. For a staffer to arbitrarily decide that this is the antisocial villain character who’s so antisocial and villainous that someone who clearly has a plan for how to play her and with who is not capable of doing so is bizarre. To try and frame these things as the result of Prototart not being interested in enough in sustaining the game through RP is bizarre. To suggest that she’d present a uniquely heightened degree of investment from the staff is bizarre.
To do these things immediately after a player had the temerity to question the judgment of a man who has a history of condescending to others and trying to force them to follow his idea of what ‘good roleplaying’ is, well. It’s hardly the rudest, least polite thing which has ever happened in MU*ing, or which has been posted on a WORA-like forum even, but it’s pretty inappropriate; it is pretty clearly not the act of an objective, unbiased actor who deserves the benefit of the doubt. It’s blatant nonsense to anyone who is familiar with how games in this particular circuit operate, and indicative of Heroes Assembled’s inability to define, then consistently apply standards to its apping process.
Prototart’s someone who takes no shit from anyone and is happy to call out what she sees as bullshit in turn; she has an acid tongue and prestige levels in holding grudges. She is also a creative and generous player who deserves better than to be talked down to by someone whose idea of compelling roleplay is ‘what if The Wasp was a pillhead sociopath who thought it’d be a cool idea to fight crime by getting into the illegal drug trade’ in the course of an already-questionable app denial.
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RE: Comic Games Are Fun!
@GF said in Comic Games Are Fun!:
And what does this have to do with HA?
Just a few days ago, there was a lounge convo in which people were agreeing that, OBVIOUSLY, it is a villain’s job to fail and be beaten by heroes in scenes, with the most generous take being ‘well of course I’ll find a way to let them escape… unless they push their luck!’. Months ago, a pick-up scene with Lara Croft and a couple of mercenary villains looking for pieces of an artifact was minorly derailed by Lara’s player insisting that because she’s ‘the hero’, she would obviously have to be the one to end up with all the pieces in the end.
I can’t speak to HOW representative these attitudes are of a game as large as HA, but given past experiences with superhero games, I cannot - as you allude to - help but think that they are fairly indicative of what people tend to expect.