@Gashlycrumb Idk how to ask this… does this happen to you frequently? Are you a bit of a chore? I mean I’ve absolutely been a bit of a chore.

I joined Otherspace long after everyone else did and I recall vaguely some attempt to monetize it in some way. The director was compiling everyone’s scenes into a book and selling it… I THINK?

I understand that there are paid MUDs out there but as a theoretical exercise, what would happen if MUSHing ever became monetized in some way? Would you personally PAY for a STed experience? They do apparently do this with DnD!

Would this concrete exchange make things easier for you, or would it be antithetical to the concept of collaborative writing?

I’m vaguely reminded of some L&L that drew ire for taking a break for Christmas. I do kinda’ think it’s just… the nature of a free medium. People are ultimately, eventually, going to do whatever they want, even if it might result in bad things later. It’s like being mad at the rain for personally raining on your picnic. I see solutions here like “just fix it just do the thing :)” and if it were that easy we probably wouldn’t be having this convo. Ask any staffer who was DEDICATED to prompt, “fast”, consistent responses how long they stuck around. How long the game existed.

I try to tell this to folk all the time, you will be a far happier person if you do not put all your eggs in one basket. Do not put all your happiness in one game, because then you will internalize everything as a personal slight. It may mean that you pull back on your engagement, but I’m sure we’ve all seen a particular player that goes SUPER hard into something, creates a TON of activity, and eventually either peters out or crashes out.

My MU peeve is that I write a big post then remember it’s the peeve thread where you’re allowed to have unproductive, non-constructive complaints about the system that innately discourage all would-be game creators who may now believe that someone is always going to be watching them on the +where to decide whether or not they are stretched thin enough.

@somasatori I get what you’re saying, but it always makes me a bit nervous relying on the court of public opinion/free market of the playerbase to handle an… arguably unthematic app.

The playerbase might’ve known they’d be encountering all kinds of people, but they probably don’t love the weight of social enforcement. Turning people away sucks no matter how steely you are, and if players are openly avoidant, unwilling to use public channels to search for RP, this is a problem. Watch how your very active, very social dynamo player handles a character like this. Watch the energy get drained from their bones as they try and fail to work with this character that probably shouldn’t have seen the light of day.

This tends to happen ANYWAY in situations where the staff is unaware of how someone is RPing their powergamey werewolf, or a little more hands-off in general. I’d strive to work against it, not encourage it, since in my experience someone really dedicated to their twinky character will stubbornly linger on a game far longer than short order. IDEALLY they get bored and leave on their own. It happens! Not always.

Although we might be getting off topic here.

@helvetica People do be wanting to write a lot sometimes. I guess there’s a captive audience there, technically. On CoG we had a few folk complaining about the limit and then trying to find ways around it by putting it somewhere else on their profile. As a youth never in my wildest dreams would I have predicted that people actually want to write full novellas for their backgrounds. My goal was generally to get in there and exchange poses with other people.

@Pavel I DO prefer when there’s a little questionnaire provided.

There’s another thing. The CONTENT of the CharGen/Application. For 2k5 it was a big fat written app that was e-mailed. The length of it was determined by the specialness of the roster character you were picking up.

In contrast Arx was like “you want THAT weird old man that’s in the freezer? ok yam sure” which was oddly refreshing.

I’ve often wondered how much applications actually filter anything.

Oh strap in I can make this thread controversial!

This extremely social hobby requires you to understand nuance in text, requires you to be able to read the room, requires you to take cues gracefully, requires you to be able to put yourself in another person’s shoes, and generally requires you to be GOOD at other human beings, which is actually kind of hard and involves actual work! COMMENCE FIGHT.

But it does appear that most folk prefer web. Telnet hanging on by a thread.

Which do you prefer and why? Have either of these fallen short in what you’d really prefer? Am I missing a secret third option?

@bear_necessities So sorry, did NOT mean to derail, genuinely wanted to hear people summarize the core theme of the books they’re passionate about. I don’t mind if anyone wants this spun off into rough and rowdy, although I may feel a little sick being at the top of any rough and rowdy thread.

I was def curious about how often most RPers even consider Other People’s fun. We’ve seen “Yes OF COURSE here’s how”, “No, I’m a bit bad about that (kudos for self reflection!)”, and “Yes but what about MY fun”. And then of course there’s the nuance of someone thinking they provide enjoyment but the reality not quite matching up. This hobby is so annoyingly social.

Jax is right but man where else do we get stories about players frequently posing the EMBARRASSING removal of pants to reveal powder blue briefs!

Also, I know I’m very often like, won’t someone think of the poor staffers, that’s kind of my schtick, but it’s always good to remember that someone who put a lot of effort into making an enjoyable platform that brings you great fun can ALSO be a real shitty person to be around, and you have to kinda’… look within and decide if you want to tolerate that. It really depends on how often you interact with admin on games. If you play in your own little corner of the sandbox, you can probably skim by unscathed for a bit. If you’re a dynamo that brings engaging content to every game you visit, which requires working with admin, this is a problem.

I err on the side of believing the person that put a fuckton of effort into something to create a space for others, mainly for the reasons we’ve witnessed in that Empire thread where someone wails at the public about injustice when it turns out they’re the problem. This happens… often. Often enough to make me untrusting.

HOWEVER. As we can see from this MASSIVE thread, admin do be wrong. Boy howdy they do be wrong.

@Ashkuri People love talking about their character, even if their character might only respond with mysterious grunts. So if the opportunity arises, I generally guide the RP in that direction. MORE QUESTIONS. It’s fun to learn about interesting characters!

Also comedy. I try to hold the idiot ball often, it’s usually pretty fun.

ALSO, setting OTHER characters up to kick some ass and shine.

@MisterBoring said in Bad Stuff Happening IC:

Other groups (including a few major LARP organizations I can think of) seem to delight in using negative bleed to drive perceived rivals away to make sure their characters are dominant in all situations.

Sounds like they were being a butt about things!

I do kinda’ think we’ve blurred the lines between positive bleed and negative bleed at this point. If you don’t bleed, you don’t have blood, and are an emotionless robot, though I gather some folk were using the term bleed in a different way where it meant more like bleeding out ON someone, bleeding outward in a way that’s perhaps unpleasant.

I think negative bleed is less of a problem than someone just being a butt about things. Someone venting to me in DMs about their IC problems with my pals, MAYBE they’re experiencing negative bleed, but it’s manifesting in them being a butt.

Damn!!!

Unexpected, unintended, unplanned embarrassment is generally why when I hold the idiot ball, I try to only hold it in front of people I trust, because otherwise someone’s gonna’ post a proclamation the next morning LORD EIRAN, LAYABOUT OF THE LAURENTS, SEEN BEING AN UNMARRIAGEABLE IDIOT.

But honestly, that’s rare! A lot of people are good sports.

Bad things happening, botched shit, generally A+, gimme. It’s just that social thing of oops my character looks like a fool even if he’s not actually supposed to be a fool about this.

I feel like I need to be clearer about my perspective, since there are indeed some viewpoints presented here that are along the lines of not my monkeys, not my circus, I’m just the player, which I totally get. As a player, you might get disgruntled, you might feel betrayed, you might not care at all, you might be literally using it to pose right back. My thoughts on all of this has been through the lens of a gamerunner, and just like I feel that any gamerunner tolerating and attempting to talk down someone that misbehaves right off the bat, a gamerunner that tolerates the usage here does their playerbase a disservice. The gamerunner might be okay with assholish behavior, and the gamerunner might be okay with allowing folk to use LLMs, but I personally do not think that is healthy for a game.

I could be wrong about that. I’m not some gamerunning titan that has run many many public games to completion. But I do think tacit permittance would lead to friction. I guess in the same way that some people expect async as a baseline and some people don’t and then there’s some… fun tension.

I don’t actually know what a game would look like, if their policy is “AI is fine” or even “AI is not fine but we’re not going to chase you down”. My speculation, to be clear, is that it would not work out well.

Aight so we can’t use tools to check, and we can’t use our guts to check, and we apparently can’t use both to check. What the fuck do we do, lie back and think of England? Hope for structural change in society? Assume the doofus that wrote like a chimpanzee 1 pose ago mustered the will and intelligence to get their shit together for this poetry contest?