I tend to design games to encourage a particular playstyle, rather than to repel one. Mostly.

Most of this comes down to the mission statement that defines the whole game design (and gameplay) process. I will be very clear about what the game is and isn’t there, in hopes that people will self-select whether they’ll like the game or not. Policies are the next step, being very clear what will be encouraged and disallowed (PvP rules; alt rules; IC and OOC harassment rules; social contract; plotrunning rules; how real-life prejudices will be handled in a modern, historical, or near-historical setting; etc).

My general workflow is to determine what kind of RP I want to see on the game, how to support and encourage that, spot and remove any roadblocks to it (the waygate system in The Fifth World is my best example of that, we had a multi-planetary game, but didn’t want barriers to casual RP, so we added limited instant travel in so folks could be on whichever planet they wanted), and then let players know what the intended thrust of RP will be.

That being said, most of the choices of what I want to play: PvE, zero-tolerance-for-harassment, collaborative playstyle, combination of action and casual, clear reasons for people to work together (with IC friction), lend themselves toward the type of players that I enjoy playing with.

@Aria said in AI Megathread:

I’m pretty sure we’re all just living in the plot of Wall-E now and I hate it here.

Wall-E and Idiocracy. Yup.

There are definitely good reasons for not linking an AresMUSH handle to your account–there are creepers and assholes and rumormongers aplenty in our little hobby.

So I agree that no one is beholden to creating a last handle that goes beyond games, someone else’s safety is more important than my comfort.

But I will admit that I feel a great deal more comfortable when I recognize the handle of staff on a game and I know who I’m dealing with. It allows me to start out in a place of trust (or to avoid the game entirely if it’s someone I’ve had a bad run-in with in the past). If they have a handle that I don’t recognize, I will start out in a place of neither trust nor distrust. There should always be room for new folks to come into the hobby and start up a game, but for me at least, it always makes me feel a little better to recognize a handle that I know and trust on the staff list.

I also think that staff should always have their player bits linked to their staff bit. As others have pointed out, there’s a power imbalance there, and unless it’s recognized and called out, it can get treacherous. Sure, it can be nice to go “off duty” and pretend to not be a staffer for a while playing a “hidden alt,” but it’s also disingenuous, because you are a staffer, and you’re seeing things through staffer eyes the whole time, and can bring in the weight of staff whenever you want (either through yourself or one of your fellow staffers).

I agree with a lot of the takes here, particularly the ones around the impact of XP spend mechanics on neurospiciness.

I’m also one of those guys who really hates someone coming into a scene with a 2 Firearms and then suddenly having a 4 when they find out that shooting a gun is critical to the scene.

I’ve previously been of the opinion that setting your cooldown to about the frequency of XP drops (on games where XP is a weekly/monthly/daily/whatever occurrence) was the way to go, so that people could keep up with spending their weekly XP as it came in, but if they wanted to store XP, they couldn’t bank a bunk and plop it down all at once during a scene. But, as mentioned above, that runs into problems with ADHD and other neurospiciness (it’s not great for my OCD either because I feel like I’m “slipping” if I don’t do it at the same time each week, because I can’t ever get the hours I lost between the cooldown ending and my actual spend back).

I’m now coming around to the thought that (for FS3), the solution may be a 1-day cooldown for weekly XP (and a high XP pool cap, like 20ish). So yeah, someone can pick up a brand new skill (for 1 XP) or go from 1 to 2 (again for 1 XP) during a scene if they want to, but they can’t jump from 5 to 6, say. But if they’ve forgotten for a couple of weeks, they can go back over the next week and spend that XP one per day, and unless they’ve really been ignoring XP (like for 5 months), they won’t actually lose the XP. Should help out with the feeling that you need to “keep up” because if you forget for a couple of days, you can just spend immediately and your cooldown will be over before the next XP is given out. There’s still some waiting if you’re way back, but it shouldn’t be as impactful if you can spend XP every day if you’ve got a stash instead of having to wait a week.

@bear_necessities said in "My Guy Syndrome":

I’m going to push back a little here. … I also do my very best to know my place and try and decide if my presence in that scene is going to add to it. So if in your example the RP is happening in the biker bar, and the RP is happening because a gang of bikers is having a scene for their faction, and you are not in the faction, does your character add value to the scene?

@Faraday said in "My Guy Syndrome":

I still think there’s nothing wrong with politely bowing out of a scene where your character just doesn’t fit.

Fully agreed on both points. “Yes and”-ing yourself into a scene is great… if you fit yourself into the scene and respect the other players and characters to do it (and if they’re okay with it in the first place/the scene is open). People who come into a scene and take it over are at least as bad as My Guys.

I agree with both @Ashkuri’s list of problems, and @Faraday’s perspective that they aren’t always problems. I think that @chorus and @SockMonkey have an important point to bridge that attitude gap that Faraday mentioned: sure, there are some things that your character wouldn’t normally do… but we don’t play this game to play “normally” do we? I often like to think, “No, normally my character wouldn’t be caught dead in that biker bar where the RP is happening, so why is my character there?”

Like several posters above, I’ve come around to the idea that an app should be as short as it can be… while also demonstrating knowledge, understanding, and ability to work within the themes, setting, and mechanics.

I’m a big fan of bullet points, and of Staff providing a list of details that they want to know (“why is your character in this location,” “how did gaining magic affect your character,” “how are they connected to the game described in our mission statement” for example). I want to see that the character will be able to interact with other characters (don’t send me a loner app unless you’re also sending me info on how they’re going to get out of their shell), and how they’ll fit within what Staff wants the game to be.

And I want it all in bullet points, as short as possible to get that information across.

I don’t know that the term CvC solves any problems, but I also don’t see it as spin. In my mind, calling IC conflict where everyone is working together to tell a good story CvC reframes the conflict to one where the players can be cooperative.

PvP doesn’t suggest to me that the players are going to start hitting each other. To me, the difference is that in PvP, the players are trying to one-up one another OOCly as well as ICly. They aren’t cooperating to tell a story, they’re pitting their OOC wits against one another as well as their IC wits (there could even be some situations where there’s OOC competition even though there’s IC cooperation, maybe two characters are working together one a project and are ICly cooperating, but the two players each want to one-up the other and come out looking “best” from the cooperation).

And PvP can be fun as hell, don’t get me wrong. There is indeed a different rush to knowing that you got one over on another real person, not just that your character won the dice rolls.

I don’t think that CvC should suggest that something is more or less messy than PvP, I think that it should suggest that the players are cooperating even though their characters are competing.

@Faraday said in Non-toxic PvP:

That was literally the statement that kicked off this entire tangent. A proposed zero-tolerance policy towards pacifist characters in high-conflict factions.

Looking back to @Jumpscare’s original post about zero tolerance for this type of player, I want to know that they are describing an archetype that they’re calling “the pacifist,” not players playing pacifist characters at all.

Here’s the actual description.

@Jumpscare said in Non-toxic PvP:

The pacifist is a player archetype who will join a moderate or high conflict group, then do as much as they can for their faction without engaging in the central conflict. Then, when they get backed into a position where they’re called upon to resolve a conflict by fighting it out, they’ll agree to the fight but refuse to fight back, letting the opposing side win, in order to give the other players the most unsatisfying resolution possible.

@Juniper then clarified with:

Pacifists don’t just sit out, they tend to belittle everyone participating and take a revisionist approach to the faction’s raison d’être.

Again, referencing the character archetype, not anyone who wanted to play a character with pacifist beliefs.

@Kestrel kept up with the idea that this was about a character archetype who uses their character’s pacifism as a bludgeon to wrongfun people playing characters who fit with the purpose/vibe of the faction.

I admit that I lost the thread a little bit with the specific example mentioned later, since it refers to some situations and mechanics specific to a game that I don’t play, but I don’t believe that there was ever an intention to ban people from playing pacifist characters, just characters who fit the archetype of a character who is (irony intended) a militant pacifist who uses their beliefs to demean and socially bludgeon characters who engage in violent IC actions within the designed theme and setting of the game.

@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.

I think that the main goal is to prevent CvC or PvP to reach a story-ending point (death, utter dishonor, etc) until the story has actually come to a satisfying ending (as agreed upon by all players involved).

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To @Juniper’s point about Pacifist characters and @kestrel’s addition, I don’t think the problem is characters who are pacifists, it’s players who play a particular trope of Pacifist who constantly wrongfun their fellow characters for “allowing violence to control them” or something like that, even when ICly there’s damned good reason for that violence (like the other side is trying to eat you).

ETA: It’s like the idjits in World War Z who want to go out and negotiate with the Zeds… except in this case, they just talk about how horrible the other PCs are for NOT negotiating with the Zeds, they never actually go out and get their well-deserved and story-appropriate comeuppance or moment of realization.

@howyadoin said in Scenes within Scenes:

But the real purpose of table talk is to isolate the inane peanut gallery chatter from the actual important shit going on.

And also to make mostly one-way scenes (such as sermons, lectures, ceremonies, giant meetings and concerts) less boring.

Again, this seems like a code solution trying to fix a social problem.

If there’s “important shit” going on that the peanut gallery can’t interrupt? Don’t have the peanut gallery at the scene. Have them in their own side-scene, either happening at the same time as the “important shit” scene that they can watch freely, or RPed after the "important shit* scene but ICly taking place at the same time.

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.

I think that -in general- places code is trying to police a social problem (players having their characters react to things their characters shouldn’t be able to hear) with a code solution (making it so players can’t hear some of what’s said). And I’m generally not in favor of that.

I’ve used the Ares places code in large combat scenes to highlight what area of the battlefield players are posing from, but since as a GM, I can’t pose to a specific place without changing places regularly, my GM poses don’t have a places tag. That’s okay, but it loses some of what’s useful about the Ares places code: highlighting what’s happening near your character.

I prefer live scenes with pose rounds lasting 10-20 minutes, or at least what we call sessioned scenes, which is live for 1-2 hours one night, and then live for another 1-2 hours another night.

During the day, I’m okay with Distracted, where pose rounds last 15-60 minutes, but it can lead to me feeling bad if I take too long or my RP partner takes too long (I didn’t say it made sense).

A solid chunk of my RP is async, even though I don’t much like the style, simply because that’s what best fits into the available time. Most of my availability is after 8pm Pacific, when most non-Pacific folks (and many Pacific folks) are in bed or headed to bed. But if an async scene goes more than 24 hours between poses, or takes more than a week overall… I tend to lose the thread pretty hard.

@Pavel Agreed. And there’s nothing wrong with calling for some Wits checks and then just providing them with the necessary information if they can’t figure it out based on your clues. Maybe your clues aren’t as brilliant as you thought they were, maybe the players just had a bad day and aren’t braining well, or maybe they’re shy of putting an idea forward for fear of being wrong. There’s no shame in either just giving them the information they need, or going the Brindlewood Bay method of “whatever solution the PCs come up with was the correct one, so long as their rolls were good enough.”

Play with your players, not at them. If there’s a big speech where there won’t be any opportunity to interact with it? Make it a post, not a scene. Don’t make players pose “sits still and listens quietly” for three rounds, and don’t make them talk “through” a big important speech just to have some interactivity with each other.

It’s perfectly legit to have a big post/scene-set of a speech or first dance or whatever can’t be interrupted, and then have the actual scene be everyone reacting to it.

@Roz I usually do.

@Roz said in Other People:

the absolute worst thing you can be on a MU* is average height

I… actually like to be within the realm of average height on MU*s (most of the time, not always). Then again, I’m also the guy who likes playing by-the-book pilots, Stormtroopers, and other characters who could be “generic” if not for how they’re played.

For me it depends in large part on what’s going on in my RL. If I’ve had a frustrating day, and my warrior gets hammered in a combat scene because the dice betray me on the GM messed up the balance, I can get frustrated. If I’ve had a normal day or a good day, I’m much more open to random disappointment in my gameplay.

That being said, I’m also a big fan of screwing my character up through choices that I make myself (whether it’s choices that the character makes or the player). I also want to be able to react to the bad stuff and maintain some player agency through it. If there’s nothing that I can do about the bad stuff (either to mitigate it or to have some fun with it on the way down), it’s a lot less fun for me.

I agree with a lot of the statements above, but particularly @Pyrephox’s note about Proportionality; if my character has been doing great lately, having them be absolutely humbled can be entertaining, but if they’ve been on a bad streak, sometimes one more failure is all it takes for me to not have a good time.

@Cobalt Absolutely no apology needed. Appreciate holding us accountable.

@Cobalt Yeah, I know that there are a lot of languages spoken by the peoples of the Salish Sea area, but our language list is really long already–and we didn’t want people to have to hyperspecialize themselves out of being able to talk to one another. So we just have Coast Salish to cover them all, even though we know that there are a dozen or more branches that are all unique (if related).