@eddie I was going to go off on a bunch of your earlier points, but several others already got there with very similar things to what I was going to say. Plus… Woah… I just got to this post:

@eddie said in Star Wars Age of Alliances: Hadrix and Cujo:

Truth of the matter is…

And I’m pretty sure that your own story tells us everything we need to know about you. You “invested” time, effort, and in-game currency into something and didn’t get the attention of a player you were interested in, the attention that you felt was your due.

You realize that putting in time, effort, and money into another person without a business deal involved is called “being a friend,” right? And that you aren’t owed anything for it? Particularly not anything of a sexual nature? There is no ROI on being a friend to someone, you do what you do because they’re your friend, not because you’re going to get something out of it.

@RedRocket said in pvp vs pvp:

I just think that on a game where a core theme of the setting is conflict between factions, making that conflict between players meaningless or even impossible for no IC logical reason makes the game setting just as pointless and boring.

You can have conflict between characters without having PvP. Even if the rule is “you can’t directly harm another PC” there’s a whole lot you can still do to play out conflict. Your lack of imagination is your problem, not a problem of PvE games.

It’s like making a game set in the marvel cinematic universe but no one is allowed to play as the heroes or villains, they can only play normal people doing normal things.

Um… no it’s not. It’s like making a game set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe but no one is allowed to play as villains, just heroes – oh wait, that’s pretty much most comic book MU*s out there.

@RedRocket said in pvp vs pvp:

Putting everyone on the same team means staff takes on the burden of being everyone else in the world.

This is actually almost universally true, unlike most of what you’ve said. A PvE game does require more Staff effort to create all of the antagonists and their actions to frustrate the PCs – but it requires less Staff effort to deal with assholes who are just out to grief other players by killing their characters.

@RedRocket said in pvp vs pvp:

When the games started being about protecting the feelings of bad actors who instigated trouble then ran to staff for protection it all went to shit.

You have this backwards. Yes, there are some people who do bad things and then complain when they get consequences for those bad things, but those players exist on PvE games too, and they still try to weasel out of consequences. But by closely monitoring or eliminated PvP, you stop allowing the bad actors who instigated trouble by killing characters for OOC reasons – or just to grief the other players. The people who “make it their life goal to ruin things for everyone” aren’t the people asking that their characters not be killed off for no reason, it’s the people killing off other characters for no reason.

@RedRocket said in pvp vs pvp:

What is happening now isn’t working. What people did then was working. Back in the day there were hundreds of active players on at a time. Now you’re lucky to see five.

Huh… sounds like you’re not on the games that are successful right now. Sure, they may not have 100 players at a time, but they’re perfectly happy with 30. It’s almost like MU*ing is an outdated technological medium whose primary players grew up and are now adults with jobs and lives and families rather than being high school or collect students who time on their hands.

Your issues sound like a you problem.

@sao This isn’t a direct reply to you, but you were the last one on the thread talking about this subject. For me, it’s the difference between “I don’t distrust you” and “I don’t trust you.” I’ll play on a game with Staff that I don’t distrust. I may not fully trust them, but I’m willing to offer them the chance to earn that trust. I will not play on a game where I don’t trust Staff. That is for the people who have already burned me or someone who I do trust.

And I agree that life is too short for the stress of “do I trust this person I’ve put in a position of power over my fun or not,” and this has only gotten more true as my life has gotten more full.

@Apos Agreed. Any time that someone asks me to define a term that should be common knowledge, I assume that they are just looking for clearly delineated rules that they can push the envelope on and then claim that they’re not breaking the actual rules.

Everyone should know what “creepy” means, and if they can’t avoid it, then they can’t play on any game I run.

Like a few of the previous posters, I couldn’t finish reading the log. It was disgusting. The use of the Luck point to gaslight a character “because it’s funny” was particularly heinous.

Apart from and beyond the horrific content, I also found the future-imperfect tense (or whatever ‘will’ and ‘would’ and the like are) posing grating.

Sorry, @Cobalt, that you had to deal with that, but also thank you for dealing with it so that it didn’t continue (even if it led to you closing your game down).

The parent(s) of student(s) at my district were picked up by ICE and detained. The student(s) are with family, but it’s still shaking up this tiny-ass rural, progressive island community. And it’s shaking up me too even if I’m white as Wonder Bread.

When you’ve got your brain-weasels going full-bore, and then someone reaches out about RP, and those nasty scratchy bitey things quiet down for a little bit.

@Pavel I get that you’re trying to take the most generous interpretation, and I was too – until I got to the talk about ROI. I completely understand being disappointed that a storyline didn’t work out how I wanted it to, how I planned for it to. I get that, it’s happened to me, and it’s sucked.

But, unless there was some specific agreement, no one should be talking about return on investment in interpersonal relations unless it’s some version of Prue Leith’s “It’s not worth the calories” where you’re deciding that the other person isn’t worth your time and so you’re disengaging yourself.

To expect a particular return on your investment from the other person, particularly where romantic RP/TS is involved… that’s way too close to “I bought her dinner and drinks, I deserve sex” for my comfort.

As for the other situation that @eddie mentioned – I really feel for them about that one. That sounds like an uncomfortable situation, and a boundary that they set properly and which was then crossed by another player. That’s not cool at all.

To me, the core of a Lords & Ladies game is that characters are grouped by families or groups that are competing for influence and prestige within a larger feudal or semi-feudal structure – and that the characters are influential people within the setting.

Now, this could be:

• wayfinders who lead family canoes between Polynesian islands, competing for pride of place
• competing cyberpunk megacorps all under a Corporate Court – so long as the PCs were high-level executives at the corps, rather than disposable espionage operatives
• knights and barons and viscountesses living in fantasy castles
• mafia families under a capo di tutti capi
• technoknights and starship captains in a semi-feudal, multi-system space empire
• daimyo and geisha in the Shogunate (or a fantasy version thereof)
• minor landed gentry in Victorian England (or a fantasy version thereof)

I don’t think that pseudo-European matters, but I agree that combat is usually going to be a means to gather influence or prestige rather than the point in and of itself.

I would actually love to see a Lords & Ladies game using FS3 autocombat for attacks on reputation – leave any physical combat to just straight rolls, because it’s just not as important as the social maneuvering.

@Pyrephox said in On the utility of Logs, Receipts, and Proof:

There are patterns of abuse that can really on be seen AS A PATTERN, because each individual incident is small and easily dismissed.

This is why reporting even just “a creepy feeling” is so important. More than once, I have gotten reports from multiple players (and noticed myself) that a player was giving off a creepy vibe, testing those boundaries with people. When confronted, the creep revealed themselves via their responses and were removed – after they were removed, several additional people came forward to say that they had been targeted.

If you are being victimized by someone, chances are that you are not alone in this. If I (as Staff) get one report of someone being generally creepy, I’ll watch them more closely, but if I get four reports from people in three different playgroups? Yeah, that person’s probably gone, even if each of the reports is just “felt like they were pushing boundaries.” Unless it’s obvious, I’ll talk with the prospective creep, but it’s definitely going to be easier a) to be direct with them about the problem, and b) to obfuscate those reporting the problem, if I have multiple reports.

@bear_necessities That’s fair to disagree on, and it may just be a question of word use.

In my opinion, when a Staffer has the power to remove someone from the game, or the power to inflict IC consequences on that player’s character, they are in a position of power over that player.

The player can remove the Staffer from that position of power over them by leaving the game, but unless they do that, they are in an asymmetric power relationship.

@Pacha Definitely every Staffer has the right to decide what they’re willing to put up with. To go back to my other point, that’s actually one of the reasons that they have power in the situation, because they’re the one who can decide that.

And I would definitely look in askance of a Staffer who had a quick trigger on what made a player more trouble than they’re worth. Of course, my own definition of a quick trigger is likely to be different than someone else’s, just like my definition of “more trouble than they’re worth.”

@Yam Staff groups that I’ve been a part of have banned a whole bunch of problematic players.

In some cases, it was because we (I’m always part of a Staff team, and we always discuss bannings) had credible reports (usually from multiple folks, but not always) of creepy or harassing behavior. In those cases we do not give warnings, we notify, ban, and put up a post with the broad outlines of the reasoning (we never out victims in those posts or in the notifications).

In other cases, we’ve had less pointed reports (a general bad feeling, behavior that we felt was borderline, etc) and we have given warnings. Again, those warnings discuss the behaviors, not people, and we always do our best not to out victims. We also try to give steps to improve behavior and avoid another incident.

And in a few cases, we have banned people because they were causing more difficulty for Staff than their efforts were giving to the game. This is generally people who demonstrate a poor attitude or an inability to stay within the realm of the theme and setting. In this case, we do give a warning.

We have lost other players because of players we’ve banned, but in almost every situation, we have at least one other player who comes up to us afterwards and thanks us for removing the troublesome player. Sometimes it’s one of the reporters, sometimes it’s someone else entirely. I have yet to regret a single ban that I’ve been a part of, even if I may be sad that some people choose not to see the problematic behavior of their friend and take their time elsewhere.

@Pacha said in Empire Discussion Thread:

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.

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.

@bear_necessities said in Empire Discussion Thread:

@Ominous said in Empire Discussion Thread:

one clearly has power over the other

No they don’t. Let’s not be super ridiculous here. That’d be like saying Pyre has power over us because they are mods of the forum

Anyone in a position of power (and staffing a game, or a forum, is that) has some measure of power over those who partake of whatever gives them that power. Can a player always just quit to take themselves out of the staffer’s power? Absolutely. But while they are on that game, the staffer has some power over them. This is just an integral part of positions of power.

@KarmaBum If you like FS3, I do happen to have the stats I put together from The Network’s Western series that y’all could use as a starting point.

@DrQuinn said in Historical Games Round 75:

Like a social contract is great, but also is going to probably ensure that your player base is mostly white.

I think that that depends on what’s in the social contract. Like, if the social contract says that no racism will be allowed onscreen, that’s going to be different than if it says you can only inflict it upon your own character, and that’s going to be different than if it says that racism is baked into the setting but that all characters will strive against it, and that’s going to be different than if the contract doesn’t mention racism at all.

The social contract can be used to set expectations for level of engagement with various pain points – at any level of engagement.

@Tez said in Historical Games Round 75:

Throw them out. Throw them the fuck out.

Agreed 100%. You don’t let the nice Nazis in your bar, or they’ll drive off the non-Nazis and bring your friends, and then you have a Nazi bar.

@Trashcan Thank you for articulating this so nicely. It’s a very blurry line that I have issues with myself. Do you disallow IC discrimination at all (as has been neatly pointed out by others, this has its own problems with telling stories of resistance)? Do you only allow it based on non-real-world reasons (“hedge mages suck, werewolves rule!”)? Do you only allow players to apply it to their own characters (that doesn’t stop someone from fetishizing the struggle that another player may have to deal with in RL)?

I don’t know that there are good, “right” answers to any of those questions.

I do agree with others above that if I don’t trust the game runners to enforce the boundaries of their playerbase, the answer to most questions is “no.”

@mietze said in Historical Games Round 75:

I’ve always told people I understand how exploring certain themes from the relative safety of RP is very appealing but that’s probably something better done in a private game or one that the playerbase is heavily vetted because on a public one, one with randos, or one with many “friends” of friends, you are increasing the likelihood of someone who has no business exploring those themes with others being able to come in. Maybe sometimes there’s staff willing to police it, and if there is and you like that avenue of play rather than whining you better treat them well, because most people don’t have time or patience for that.

I think this is a great take, but I also think that some of this can be covered with the use of a Social Contract as described by James Mendez Hodes in one of his several very good blog posts on historical (tabletop) roleplaying:

https://jamesmendezhodes.com/blog/2018/11/10/best-practices-for-historical-gaming

If Staff lays out from the start what is acceptable to see on-screen and what is not, what will be argued about on-screen and what will be accepted, then anyone who violates that Social Contract can pre-emptively be shown the door, allowing those who remain to explore the setting to the extent that they feel comfortable within the protections of that Contract.

@Raistlin said in Missed Settings:

5. Buffy. The setting is so great that I’m shocked there weren’t more of these games, and there aren’t any around today.

I think this has the same problem that Firefly does: the characters are more of a draw than the setting is. For instance, I don’t want to play in the Browncoat-a-verse as much as I want to play with Jayne and Kaylie and the rest of the crew – and no, FCs aren’t enough. Likewise, I would want to play with Spike and Angel and Faith and Willow and Oz… more than in a generic-ish vampire-slaying modern (or '90s period piece) world.

I started on a DIKU MUD called Dark Castle – no RP, just mob-killing.

After a little bit, I wandered over to The Weave, and then to A Moment in Tyme. That was the first game that really got me hooked on MU*ing as I know it now. It was an RP MUD that provided XP (eventually) for both killing mobs and for posing, and then even more eventually the mobs were removed and it was only XP for posing (but the stat system was still otherwise all MUD-style).

That was way back in 1994.

While I’m a big proponent of character-death-when-it’s-appropriate-to-the-story, one thing that I think needs to be talked about a little bit is how that death will impact other characters. Do the players of your character’s loved ones (family, significant others, packmates, etc) want to play out grief?

While I think that character death should pretty much always be done with player consent (except in the case of Aim for the Bushes, but I consider that consent-by-continuation-after-warnings), there’s also the non-death effects on everyone around the character to consider, and a lot of folks (myself included) who have gone for death-for-drama’s-sake haven’t always considered the knock-on effects.