I love the game lines that I usually play, the topic/world, and being able to create (write). For games like WoD or Fate-like games, I love the tabletop aspect of interacting with that side of things and being able to RP out things based on that. It makes it all feel more fun than regular tabletop. When things happen in-game, we can talk about it in RP, plot next steps, and work through how it impacts characters and the world. It’s always a lot of fun finding players and staff who are really in for the story building and open to ideas. So much fun being creative in that way.

I dislike it when games lose that side of things. The part where we’re “doing things”. Changing the game world, interacting with storylines, leveraging rules systems, and playing the game.

I’ve played games where we’ll spend RL days working through some plot, and it doesn’t feel like it has an impact on the game in any way, shape, or form, and that kind of leads to a feeling I dislike too. I’m not a fan of async either. It’s too hard to keep interested.

I like when games push a lot of the ooc discussions to Discord or channels I can gag. I know we’re all people and we’re a community, but sometimes I don’t wanna hear about someone’s bad day or feelings on whatever spamming through channels I monitor for things related to the game.

There is a lot more information I think is needed to really assist, mostly because depending on what software and services you’re already using, there may already be several ways this can be done. Without knowing more, here is some random info that may help point you in the right direction:

Email Parsing Services:
Mailgun (Inbound Routes) - parses incoming emails, extracts data, sends to webhooks
SendGrid (Inbound Parse) - similar functionality
Postmark (Inbound Processing) - clean interface for email-to-webhook
Amazon SES (with Lambda) - AWS solution for email processing

Workflow Automation Platforms:
Zapier - can trigger on new emails, parse content, update records
Microsoft Power Automate - especially if you’re using Office 365/Outlook
Make (formerly Integromat) - more complex automation workflows
n8n - open-source workflow automation

CRM/Database Integrations:
HubSpot - has built-in email-to-record functionality
Salesforce - Email-to-Case feature does exactly this <–
Airtable - can receive emails and parse them into records
Notion - has email-to-database capabilities

DIY Solutions:
Google Apps Script - if using Gmail/Google Workspace
Microsoft Graph API - for Office 365 environments
IMAP + Python/Node.js scripts on a server

@InkyTheGhost said in Numetal/Retromux:

I’d hate to bring things back around to the negative, so I’m going to avoid any kind of personal attack in this post as best I can. I think this forum has done a pretty good job pulling apart Joe/Vincent’s arguments already, save one. And I think it is one that needs to be responded to.

Blossom’s player is not the creepy stalker. She is kind, extremely loyal, unafraid to speak her mind, and one of the best writers I’ve RP’d with in decades of playing on MU*s. She will always stand up for her friends, and that includes the times beyond counting in which she stood up to me on behalf of Joe/Vincent. I wish he had better earned such loyalty, or prized it more highly.

I’ve had, lets call it center court (rather than front row) seats for most of the events that Vincent has described in his unwarranted attack on a player that had nothing to do with his situation turning to shit on Retro. His version of them bares very little resemblance to the truth as I perceived it at the time, nor as I recollect it now. I strongly suspect that the version of events posted here is similar to most of his diatribes against his perceived enemies on Retro: A small kernel of truth, cherry picked from hours, days, months, or years of conversations; which he feels he can use to make someone look bad. In almost every example though, if you look at the actual “receipts” without the context Vincent/Joe provides, what you see is just someone trying to be nice to the guy.
Can Joe/Vincent provide more of these out of context statements? Probably. We all say things to our friends in private DMs that might make us look bad if taken entirely out of context.

Finally, I would like to echo previous sentiment that if there -are- staff orgies on Retro, I’m very sad I have never been invited to them. If there were orgies amongst the Giovanni, big time same. (Though I suspect both were just figments of someone’s imagination.)

I’m Inky, I staff Changeling and Wraith on Retro. Anyone who would like to play either is welcome to app in. I can’t promise you orgies, but I can promise I won’t hate on your concept out of hand, whether it is a special snowflake or Johnny Card Board Cut Out.

Regarding the cherry-picking aspect, in general, I’ve found that in real life and on forums like this, everyone is an unreliable narrator when it comes to telling their own story, and everyone tends to be the hero of their own story.

For the game itself, my own experience has varied. You are forced to deal with a player/character like Eddie in every sphere in some kind of role that means you have to deal with the baggage they bring, for good or bad. Like most games, there is a core group of characters/players that sucks all the oxygen out of the room for other players/take up all the time staff has/do everything without thought for other players. All the usual tropes we’re used to in these games as discussed here, good things and bad things.

@Pavel said in MU Peeves Thread:

@helvetica said in MU Peeves Thread:

Not to discount everything you just said because it sounds quite specific, but game admin are allowed to rp, they aren’t obligated to defend that time, and anyone who thinks otherwise can go fuck themselves.

I would echo this simply to amplify the intent: Game admin should be required to give themselves time to RP. If nothing else but to remind themselves of the joy of the thing they’re working so hard to put forth, but it also allows them to see where things clunk, and where changes need to be made.

I agree 100%, so staff enjoys playing, and wants to keep games open, and wants to continue playing and running games.

In games, I think staff should also take long, hard looks at what they do and think about whether ‘the juice is worth the squeeze’ in some of the things they’ve historically done. If you have a process like you must wait X amount of time and spend Y amount of scenes with a staffer/logged scenes with PCs to get some outcome… and there isn’t enough staff time and/or active PCs, maybe rethink that process

Or if you have a process and you have been kicking this can down the road because you are too busy, the process just doesn’t work, or there is some other problem with getting it done… Maybe just call it a flawed approach and change how it’s done. Modernize, as it was once said: Any improvements made anywhere besides the bottleneck are an illusion.

This gives staff more time to focus on what matters in running the game and playing, and gives players a game that works…

@MisterBoring said in MU Peeves Thread:

@Gashlycrumb said in MU Peeves Thread:

If I have become an insufferable chore recently and this is the reason I’ve had this experience, then staffers have developed time travel. You really can’t say staff is refusing to interact with a player because the player is a chore when there was never a period when they did actually interact with that player.

A lot of people don’t realize they’ve become a chore until well after the fact. We’re not often conscious of annoying social behaviors because we’re used to acting a specific way, even in an online text form.

I try my best not to be a problem for other players and staff, even when it means a much worse player experience for me. It’s better overall for me in terms of how I feel about myself, but I’ve been finding I dislike most other players more and more over the years, for what appears to be the exact opposite type of behavior.

I find myself trying to “yes and”, find places for us all to work together, give us all story elements to work with, and then when it’s handed off, none of that seems to be returned or very rarely. Which makes playing harder and harder the more time I sink into games.

Mix in the number of times sunk into apps, building characters, opening jobs, and just things falling into black holes where staff seems to think player time doesn’t equal any amount of their concern, and it all leads to a horrible overall vibe. But maybe there are better games out there that I could find and play. If anyone has suggestions, hit me up!

I usually slip off and go to the PS5 or PC, but I love to write, and it’s just not the same, you know?

@MisterBoring said in MU Peeves Thread:

@Gashlycrumb said in MU Peeves Thread:

If I have become an insufferable chore recently and this is the reason I’ve had this experience, then staffers have developed time travel. You really can’t say staff is refusing to interact with a player because the player is a chore when there was never a period when they did actually interact with that player.

A lot of people don’t realize they’ve become a chore until well after the fact. We’re not often conscious of annoying social behaviors because we’re used to acting a specific way, even in an online text form.

I try my best not to be a problem for other players and staff, even when it means a much worse player experience for me. It’s better overall for me in terms of how I feel about myself, but I’ve been finding I dislike most other players more and more over the years, for what appears to be the exact opposite type of behavior.

I find myself trying to “yes and”, find places for us all to work together, give us all story elements to work with, and then when it’s handed off, none of that seems to be returned or very rarely. Which makes playing harder and harder the more time I sink into games.

Mix in the number of times sunk into apps, building characters, opening jobs, and just things falling into black holes where staff seems to think player time doesn’t equal any amount of their concern, and it all leads to a horrible overall vibe. But maybe there are better games out there that I could find and play. If anyone has suggestions, hit me up!

I usually slip off and go to the PS5 or PC, but I love to write, and it’s just not the same, you know?

@Pavel said in MU Peeves Thread:

@helvetica said in MU Peeves Thread:

Not to discount everything you just said because it sounds quite specific, but game admin are allowed to rp, they aren’t obligated to defend that time, and anyone who thinks otherwise can go fuck themselves.

I would echo this simply to amplify the intent: Game admin should be required to give themselves time to RP. If nothing else but to remind themselves of the joy of the thing they’re working so hard to put forth, but it also allows them to see where things clunk, and where changes need to be made.

I agree 100%, so staff enjoys playing, and wants to keep games open, and wants to continue playing and running games.

In games, I think staff should also take long, hard looks at what they do and think about whether ‘the juice is worth the squeeze’ in some of the things they’ve historically done. If you have a process like you must wait X amount of time and spend Y amount of scenes with a staffer/logged scenes with PCs to get some outcome… and there isn’t enough staff time and/or active PCs, maybe rethink that process

Or if you have a process and you have been kicking this can down the road because you are too busy, the process just doesn’t work, or there is some other problem with getting it done… Maybe just call it a flawed approach and change how it’s done. Modernize, as it was once said: Any improvements made anywhere besides the bottleneck are an illusion.

This gives staff more time to focus on what matters in running the game and playing, and gives players a game that works…

@catzilla @Gashlycrumb lol, I’ve had a similar experience where it’s a “we aren’t like other games, and this is going to be fun, fast, easy…” smash cut to 4 to 5 months later, and nothing has happened on said request other than kicking said can down the road. It’s a strange vibe when you ping a job after a month like… so, what about now? Oh, still nothing… I’ll just keep hitting this job up every couple of weeks, maybe at some point it’ll be worth someone’s time to handle.

@MisterBoring said in Numetal/Retromux:

@xCroaker said in Numetal/Retromux:

You are forced to deal with a player/character like Eddie

Could he potentially have alts in all of the spheres?

Yes.

There is a lot more information I think is needed to really assist, mostly because depending on what software and services you’re already using, there may already be several ways this can be done. Without knowing more, here is some random info that may help point you in the right direction:

Email Parsing Services:
Mailgun (Inbound Routes) - parses incoming emails, extracts data, sends to webhooks
SendGrid (Inbound Parse) - similar functionality
Postmark (Inbound Processing) - clean interface for email-to-webhook
Amazon SES (with Lambda) - AWS solution for email processing

Workflow Automation Platforms:
Zapier - can trigger on new emails, parse content, update records
Microsoft Power Automate - especially if you’re using Office 365/Outlook
Make (formerly Integromat) - more complex automation workflows
n8n - open-source workflow automation

CRM/Database Integrations:
HubSpot - has built-in email-to-record functionality
Salesforce - Email-to-Case feature does exactly this <–
Airtable - can receive emails and parse them into records
Notion - has email-to-database capabilities

DIY Solutions:
Google Apps Script - if using Gmail/Google Workspace
Microsoft Graph API - for Office 365 environments
IMAP + Python/Node.js scripts on a server

@InkyTheGhost said in Numetal/Retromux:

I’d hate to bring things back around to the negative, so I’m going to avoid any kind of personal attack in this post as best I can. I think this forum has done a pretty good job pulling apart Joe/Vincent’s arguments already, save one. And I think it is one that needs to be responded to.

Blossom’s player is not the creepy stalker. She is kind, extremely loyal, unafraid to speak her mind, and one of the best writers I’ve RP’d with in decades of playing on MU*s. She will always stand up for her friends, and that includes the times beyond counting in which she stood up to me on behalf of Joe/Vincent. I wish he had better earned such loyalty, or prized it more highly.

I’ve had, lets call it center court (rather than front row) seats for most of the events that Vincent has described in his unwarranted attack on a player that had nothing to do with his situation turning to shit on Retro. His version of them bares very little resemblance to the truth as I perceived it at the time, nor as I recollect it now. I strongly suspect that the version of events posted here is similar to most of his diatribes against his perceived enemies on Retro: A small kernel of truth, cherry picked from hours, days, months, or years of conversations; which he feels he can use to make someone look bad. In almost every example though, if you look at the actual “receipts” without the context Vincent/Joe provides, what you see is just someone trying to be nice to the guy.
Can Joe/Vincent provide more of these out of context statements? Probably. We all say things to our friends in private DMs that might make us look bad if taken entirely out of context.

Finally, I would like to echo previous sentiment that if there -are- staff orgies on Retro, I’m very sad I have never been invited to them. If there were orgies amongst the Giovanni, big time same. (Though I suspect both were just figments of someone’s imagination.)

I’m Inky, I staff Changeling and Wraith on Retro. Anyone who would like to play either is welcome to app in. I can’t promise you orgies, but I can promise I won’t hate on your concept out of hand, whether it is a special snowflake or Johnny Card Board Cut Out.

Regarding the cherry-picking aspect, in general, I’ve found that in real life and on forums like this, everyone is an unreliable narrator when it comes to telling their own story, and everyone tends to be the hero of their own story.

For the game itself, my own experience has varied. You are forced to deal with a player/character like Eddie in every sphere in some kind of role that means you have to deal with the baggage they bring, for good or bad. Like most games, there is a core group of characters/players that sucks all the oxygen out of the room for other players/take up all the time staff has/do everything without thought for other players. All the usual tropes we’re used to in these games as discussed here, good things and bad things.

I love the game lines that I usually play, the topic/world, and being able to create (write). For games like WoD or Fate-like games, I love the tabletop aspect of interacting with that side of things and being able to RP out things based on that. It makes it all feel more fun than regular tabletop. When things happen in-game, we can talk about it in RP, plot next steps, and work through how it impacts characters and the world. It’s always a lot of fun finding players and staff who are really in for the story building and open to ideas. So much fun being creative in that way.

I dislike it when games lose that side of things. The part where we’re “doing things”. Changing the game world, interacting with storylines, leveraging rules systems, and playing the game.

I’ve played games where we’ll spend RL days working through some plot, and it doesn’t feel like it has an impact on the game in any way, shape, or form, and that kind of leads to a feeling I dislike too. I’m not a fan of async either. It’s too hard to keep interested.

I like when games push a lot of the ooc discussions to Discord or channels I can gag. I know we’re all people and we’re a community, but sometimes I don’t wanna hear about someone’s bad day or feelings on whatever spamming through channels I monitor for things related to the game.