MANNERS, PPL! ETIQUETTE! AAAAA

There are various perspectives and experiences here and I think it’s swinging from big ol’ lawless crunchy traditional games where poor sportsmanship may be rampant, to ares games where by default you’re under 3 layers of thicc limits.

I got all spun up and ready to fite against bank limits and cooldowns but it looks like almost everyone agrees that it’s a silly system. Welp.

A few years ago I was so desperate to run an ares CoD game for my pals that I went the google sheets route. I think I had it so they’d be locked or versioned or something.

Then coder pal went ahead and coded an entire CoD plugin so I ended up pivoting away from this idea. It would’ve been a lot of work managing everything like this, but hey, it’s possible! The sheets were styled from some free resources, then altered so that they handled the formulas.

@helvetica said in When is the last time you played?:

performance critiques

WHAT

Has anyone seen a system that effectively incentivizes players to run things for other players?

I ask because my pals have mused on these kinds of systems but my only perspective is like… I run scenes because I want to run them. Extra XP or perks don’t really factor in for me.

Maybe a better question… have incentives encouraged you to run scenes when you normally wouldn’t?

@bear_necessities said in When is the last time you played?:

everyone just keeps waiting on someone else to Do Something, and when everyone is waiting around, no one does anything, and the staff can’t keep up with constant demands to Do Stuff so they get burned out and yeah.

This is why I really admire both the tabletop GMs and mush GMs that are able to carry a story to completion. Like, goddamn, you guys are so powerful.

I think smaller, punchier games benefit from having a set lifespan. Think of the lifespan of all those Discord RP groups out there. So many unfinished threads…

Twice now I’ve seen someone ragequit on ares via… attempting to blank their profile. Like delete all photos and then try to leave the fields empty. Then individually leave channels.

I guess on a web-based platform you can’t really slam the door as easily.

ETA: I’ve also heard stories of folk going in to edit other peoples’ wiki pages to scrub their character OUT. Which reminds me of another story about a banned person Old Transformers Game threatening to send some kind of DMCA over their own uploads.

That new game energy can carry you far, so you really have to ride it before it fizzles out. It can give you the energy to finish an app and even reach out to strangers, which, if you’re lucky, creates a snowball effect.

The only really long apps I can remember are from Transformers 2005 for OCs where you had to dedicate a portion of it to justifying your goofy ass robot name. I don’t know how I got anything through.

Glad to see we’ve squared away that Yes, And & No, But are the same fundamental concepts.

@Ashkuri said in "My Guy Syndrome":

• Sorry for disrupting this town meeting, but it’s what my guy would do.

help im crashing out again

Ok let me be productive, I more often see people making subtle but socially hostile decisions in RP without considering the results or how it looks, buckling down on their own character’s principles, as opposed to anything truly blatant. I think most folk generally know enough to avoid openly saying “it’s what my character would do” these days. Maybe.

Threading that needle of doing what your character would do while ensuring it results in fun for others can be tricky, and requires a measure of thoughtfulness.

MY CHAR IS UNCONTROLLABLE 🤪🤪🤪 I’m going to crash out.

It all seems to come back to PVP. <<;

R&R discussion dipped into the fun topic of house rules for WoD games. I’m curious about your thoughts.

How much deviation would you tolerate before deciding that the game is no longer a “WoD” game? And how would you gauge this metric?

How would you approach a game that actually billed itself as “inspired by” WoD but not actually WoD, but perhaps gutted an entire system like the pledge system? In which almost everything else about the theme is identical to WoD theme. Would it matter to you? Do you prefer knowing before hand that a game may have altered large chunks of the rules?

These rules could be fundamental. Removing a werewolf form or the glamour harvesting system or something. Adjusting how social doors work. Is it still WoD? And if it doesn’t call itself WoD, would this accurately inform you of anything useful?

A while ago I was perusing the policies of oWoD games and I was heartened to see that most of them are at least attempting to get with the times! There’s that extra effort. That extra work you have to put in. Naturally this involves deviating from the theme. You have to house rule a bunch of shit.

It also showed that a lot of staff were tired of dealing with the bad actors that certain splats attracted. Like… this tension exists! People try to work around it. To what effect, I’m not sure. But the theme invites it, and to insist otherwise seems a bit odd.

Like if I was deciding on a theme for a new game and I wanted MINIMAL work and stress and chaos between friends and enemies, I think I might just go for a custom theme as opposed to WoD. WoD is hardmode. It’s fun, but it’s fkn hard.

I do not think saying you generally have your work cut out for you when running a game with very, very dated social mores is lazy and reductive.

While I agree that many genres have similar issues, I do kinda think oWoD has a unique brand of chaos thanks to allowing a certain kind of player to gesture to the sourcebooks and go “it’s thematic for me to be a raging asshole”. Most players don’t do this. Some do. Some buckle down hard. The older books have a lot of sexually charged lore as well, and that particular player may latch onto that with some… colorful manifestations that everyone gets to deal with.

I say this as a wod player who loves wod, though I prefer newer stuff.

Sure there’s probably star wars/star trek/lords and ladies sourcebooks that give players carte blanche in this regard. But man… wod has a secret sauce or something.

This has been insightful. Thanks gang!

@catzilla Is there tea or is this just general vibes