I just love that he called @Cobalt a “loose canon”, like she’s an 80s action movie cop.

“You’re a loose canon, Cobalt! Any more PRPs and the Mayor will be up my ass with a microscope! I need some Tums!”

@Kestrel said in MU Peeves Thread:

Not a meaningful complaint. I know I’m being a silly insecure baby about it.

But I wish the person I’ve been playing with for years, who always expresses unequivocal enthusiasm and joy about our scenes, would sometimes actually initiate them, seek me out, invite me to games they’re on, so my brain weasels would stop making me doubt whether they actually want me there.

As someone who does this, I might be able to provide an explanation.

For me, I generally assume unless someone asks (either on chan or in pages) that they’re either busy or otherwise not available. That goes even more so with someone I play with regularly. My own brain worms keep telling me that they’ll get tired of me constantly playing with them, so I try to give them space and opportunities to play with others. It’s also a reason I tend not to page first – I don’t want to be That Player who just won’t leave someone the fuck alone.

Oddly enough, I don’t seem to have this problem when I just join a MU*. Maybe the excitement of hopping on to a new place and all the shiny and new things makes the brain weasels hibernate or something.

It is a problem I recognize and try to at least offer up scenes every once in a while. I do try when someone asks to come up with the setup. At the very least sceneset, if nothing else.

But with all brain animals it’s a difficult thing to constantly keep in mind and overcome on a regular basis.

Whether it’s the same for your friend or not, I don’t know.

@kalakh said in MU Peeves Thread:

For some reason this gave me the mental image of a fuming Klingon sitting in the shadowy corner of a medieval tavern. I don’t know why Klingon specifically, but Klingon.

[Public] Ko’Dath says, “WHY DOES NO ONE WANT TO HAVE AN HONOR DUEL WITH ME?! MY BA’LETH HUNGERS FOR BATTLE! IS IT BECAUSE I DIDN’T PAY FOR A ROUND OF BLOODWINE? MAYBE I SHOULD JUST TAKE MY K’TINGA AND GO BACK TO QO’NOS SINCE IT IS CLEAR ALL YOU DISHONORABLE CURS DO NOT WANT ME HERE!”

@Jenn said in Neitherlands:

@STD

My guess, if I had to make one… It was probably because that person would rather rob a grave and eat remains than have an internship with head-staff’s NPC. But like. This is nothing more than speculation.

I know that at least in the TV show based on the books on which the games were made… Fae (which dead NPC mom was) are often targeted by human magicians. So that they can powder the bones and snort them as like, magical cocaine and mana. That is my guess.

I find these two statements to be hilarious. The idea that a player is so desperate to avoid interaction with the headwiz they would rather grind the bones of a dead NPC and snort it like magical cocaine in the vain hope that some of the magical MacGuffins will ooze off onto them tickles my funny bone in ways that are probably illegal in 48 states.

@Polk said in JKER Temporarily Banned Discussion Thread:

Bad faith posting is generally worthy of some sort of administrative action.

I’ve no dog in this hunt (and haven’t even read the thread in question), and this might be a slight tangent, but…

The impression I had was that folk here generally assume bad faith unless they personally know the person making the post. At the very least, people sure to seem to assume bad faith about anyone who comes here to defend whatever game is currently being castigated. Many times that attitude ends up being warranted, I concede that, but it is still something about this forum that really bothers me. There are accusations of bad faith in this very thread discussing bad faith! It’s recursive bad faith! Bad faith all the way down!

Now, of course, individuals are free to assume whatever vile motivations others have, but I guess I just want… confirmation? Clarification? Not sure what the right word is here…on what counts as Administratively-actionable bad faith. Clearly those defending games aren’t considered so by the admins, even if most of the vox populi sure do seem to.

@Tez said in JKER Temporarily Banned Discussion Thread:

Last night, I thought maybe that we might want to have a discussion on this as a community to see if there are additional guidelines or rules that we need to put in place. (See? Over-legislate.) This morning I think that probably I just need to be more willing to act. I take the hands-off approach to heart, so much so that Pavel teases me about it, but I don’t know! I would like to hear from you guys on this. Please do continue to discuss.

This is… honestly difficult. On one hand, the more you put rules into place, the more likely someone will be able to rule-lawyer through them. Tightening the grip ironically makes more starsystems bad actors slip through your fingers. On the other hand, there’s definitely a chilling effect if the rules aren’t clarified, so everyone knows what to expect. It’s a delicate balance, and I don’t know if anyone has ever managed to strike it.

I suppose, fundamentally, I’d err on the side of less rules. After all, if you already don’t trust the admins here to be reasonable with judgement calls, then you shouldn’t be here at all.

I hope this is the appropriate place for this.

The setting and idea seem interesting, but there’s a big sticking point in the Policies section: a requirement for an Ares handle.

Why is this so? If you want to identify specific players and make sure they are keeping in line with the alt policy, would not IP addresses be more full proof? I know I shudder in revulsion at the idea of the whole Ares handle thing (surely I can’t be the only one?) and it won’t keep anyone who is a problem from just creating a new one, right?

It’s also a point that the Ares website states explicitly that:
“Handles are an optional OOC identity…”

So making it a requirement to play on your game is directly in conflict with the stated goal of the handle in the first place.

Why is this policy there?

Encountering and reconnecting with an awesome player who you knew 19+ years ago on a completely different genre of MU*.

It just seems like complete fantastic serendipity.

And then playing with them and discovering that not only are they just as good as you remember, but are actually better. Their RP has improved!

@icanbeyourmuse said in Macha Awareness (And Unappreciation) thread:

@Cobalt They likely are just going to use it as a way to show you are a ‘horrible person’ since that seems to be what they have decided about everyone here.

Isn’t that the same here? With the majority assuming bad faith of anyone who tries to explain or defend themselves? I mean, there is a substantive difference in that, at least here, the admin won’t ban someone for having a differing opinion from them, but the same attitude pervades.

@Cobalt Don’t bother engaging them. The only winning move is not to play.

@bear_necessities said in Macha Awareness (And Unappreciation) thread:

I also know that Ruiz prefers to keep their communication off-game and will frequently defer to Discord as a method of communicating.

Okay, that… is a huge red flag to me. Asking to communicate off game has never ended well in my experience.

I don’t trigger easily, but that is definitely something that as soon as it’s suggested it’s “Shields up! Red Alert!”

@Serafine said in Neitherlands:

@Meg What’s my motivation?

Not looking like an asshat.

State what you mean clearly. Pontificating with obtuse hyperbole and metaphors does not make you sound more intelligent. It makes you sound like an asshat.

Look, I’ll make it easy for you: Do you claim that @inuki blamed @Jenn for her medical problems?

Choose one:
YES/NO

@Faraday said in World Tone / Feeling:

@Warma-Sheen said in World Tone / Feeling:

a game where there’s danger around every corner that’ll get you if you slip up for a moment SHOULD make characters risk avoidant. The problem is that most games don’t provide a reward that is worth characters overcoming that risk avoidance.

I’m skeptical that there’s any manner of reward that would get players to risk their characters to death at the drop of a hat.

In my experience, most people don’t mind losing big – even going as far as character death – as long as it’s cool. No one wants to die just from slipping on a banana peel or even just randomly getting shot in the head by an outlaw. They want to go down in a blaze of glory, or with some amazingly funny Rube Goldbergesque series of coincidences, or through something that exudes pathos.

No one wants to die like a scrub.

@Warma-Sheen’s description of the crunch-storytelling continuum seems pretty apt. I know I definitely prefer the storytelling aspect of that; I find combat systems and dice throwing to be supremely boring and I’ve hated nearly every single combat scene I’ve ever been a part of.

Though I think this might be more of a scene-by-scene thing than an overall tone. I don’t see why a MU* can’t have room for both worldviews as long as everyone knows beforehand what a specific scene is expecting. The hard part would be quantifying where, exactly, on the crunch-storytelling continuum a scene lies.

@DrQuinn said in Player Ratios:

@bear_necessities I always felt like there should be a way for players to indicate to staff if they wanted to be involved in things or not but I have no real ideas on how to implement it. Like you could do metaplot y/n because there’s always people who are dying to get in on things, then you have people that are just there to do social scenes and never want to know there’s a dark god hanging out at the bookstore, etc.

On a similar vein, one thing I always like to do is get personal with plots and incorporate aspects of a character’s background. But I always find myself hesitating. I’m gunshy about possibly ruining some idea they had about their character and stepping on toes.

Based on my experience, that’s very rarely the case, but it has also definitively happened before and it just feels bad. Now, of course, you can just ASK the player in question if you can use some aspect of their background in a plot, but that is sometimes really, really awkward if you don’t know the player very well or if the point you want to touch would have a much better impact if it was a surprise which would be ruined by asking for permission.

So having some sort of RP preference like for violence scenes/death/metaplot involving given carte-blanche to utilize a character’s background in plots would be handy.

@Faraday said in Player Ratios:

@STD said in Player Ratios:

What about cashing in the tokens to be able to make plots that actively change the world without having to go through ten layers of bureaucracy?

If somebody has a cool idea to change the world in a way that fits with your game vision, why would you require them to have OOC tokens to do so?

Conversely, if somebody has a terrible idea to change the game world in a way that wrecks the game, who cares how many tokens they have? It’s still not something you want.

It was mostly just a way to prejudge storytellers so that constant permission wouldn’t be necessary. The whole “fits your game vision” is the problematic bit; someone who has run a few dozen smaller scenes can just go ahead with whatever big idea they have without having to bother staff.

I donno, it probably wouldn’t work. I was just spitballing without really thinking it through. OP wanted some sort of inducement system.

Alternatively, maybe tokens would be equivalent to spaces. Like… there can only be one big world-changing plot active at any one time and tokens are used to reserve those spaces. The effort involved in gaining those tokens might reduce flake-outs.

@Tez said in Player Ratios:

I’ve also considered the angle of giving people tokens for running story which they can cash in for Insert Incentive Here. I’ve toyed with the idea of the incentive being staff attention, but I very, very, very much want to kill the idea that staff attention is better than player attention.

What about cashing in the tokens to be able to make plots that actively change the world without having to go through ten layers of bureaucracy?

That, I find, is a big impediment to players running stories. So if you’ve proven yourself with smaller plots (like, say, plots personal to a specific character), you earn the right to just go with something that changes the world?

Wanna blow up a building? Two Story Tokens. Have a major political figure assassinated? Three. A war? Four. World-wide apocalypse? Five.

@Juniper said in The 3-Month Players:

Because if all you have is lubricant you don’t have an engine, just a bathtub full of grease.

I’m suddenly imagining one Season (Session?) having the gimmick that every single player character is an Isekai of some sort.

@MisterBoring said in The 3-Month Players:

@Ominous Have there been any games previously that ran on a seasonal format? If not, it might be something to take a chance on. If nothing else, it gives the people who are going to stay around more things to be interested in as time goes on.

The Network and HorrorMU had seasons, I believe.

MUs based on already established properties – especially those which are still on-going – likely have a big advantage on the “what do we do” question.

The simple fact that the main show/game/book/whatever can provide inspiration if not full plots to be lifted eases the burden on storytellers.

I remember there was a Babylon 5 MU* back in the day that lasted up through the end of the series with very stable player-counts because the show kept giving new context, plot feeds, and storylines that the game would incorporate and use as inspiration for additional stuff.

One personal problem I have is that, after a MU is established, I get gunshy about running PRPs. There’s no reason for this feeling, honestly, but I always feel like I’m intruding on others’ stories even if that is clearly and explicitly not the case. This is definitely a me problem and not a problem with games overall, but I wonder if others have this particular brain worm as well and that might account for things petering off after three months.

Three months also tends to correspond to college break and vacays. Not sure how much that matters considering MU players are all old now.

@Gashlycrumb said in Lords and Ladies Game Design:

@STD oh god. Now I really want to work up a homebrew for my table-top game and do a Strange Luck game, where all the PCs have Strange Luck, and every time you roll anything you also roll for Strange Luck first, it’s just a pass fail, pass and the whole table quickly brainstorms some extremely unlikely result for your attempt. And there’s a timer set for a some random length of time between five minutes and half an hour, and every time it goes off you get another bit of Strange Luck. I wonder how far we’d actually get.

That actually sounds really fun!

Though rather than a timer, you could do something like Fate points, where you get Strange Luck points for roleplaying certain things or accepting story complications or setbacks.

@Gashlycrumb said in Lords and Ladies Game Design:

I think of that short-lived TV 1990’s show Strange Luck where the protagonist is invariably drawn into things and solves them via a series of weird coincidences. The only one I can actually remember was him finding a glass eye in a can of beans, and later in the show dropping it and narrowly avoiding getting shot because he bends down to pick it up.

I think I remember that show. One bit I remember from it is that he would buy scratch-off tickets and always win the exact amount he needed to pay for a meal.

I also vaguely remember an episode involving a guy incorrectly on Death Row and scheduled to be electrocuted at midnight. The main character winds up tracking down the REAL culprit (who is remorseful to the point of attempting suicide), attempts to get to the prison to stop the execution, but instead ends up crashing into an electric pole… which electrocutes the actual culprit while saving the falsely convicted innocent man.

But, yes, stuff like that.

Demon Lord, Retry is especially good for that sort of thing because the titular demon lord is a both a complete conman yet also constantly insists that none of the coincides that happen around him are a result of meticulous planning (which all the other characters immediately assume is the case, especially when he denies it).