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Roadspike

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.

somasatori

@Pyrephox Oh, fair enough, yeah! I was mostly using that as an example where people might be good at handling the big stuff but might have issues with more minor inconveniences. Definitely not to excuse the behavior or attempt to convince anyone to engage in it, for sure. My point was that levels of reactivity might vary or be surprising based on what the stimulus is. I think I’m also perceiving this from the older school staffer perspective of “everyone gets to play” even if the person isn’t a good fit for the game (and also not from a player perspective).

I’ve met a handful of people who get really aggravated when small rolls in social scenes don’t go their way, but who can handle poor rolls in larger scenes. I feel like this maybe falls into the “mushers don’t like to be humiliated” point mentioned elsewhere in the thread.

Ashkuri

Interesting to me that no one (yet) voted for “Yes but only physical peril, not social.” Social to me covers the like

@Yam said in Bad Stuff Happening IC:

someone’s gonna’ post a proclamation the next morning LORD EIRAN, LAYABOUT OF THE LAURENTS, SEEN BEING AN UNMARRIAGEABLE IDIOT

that kind of thing. I would consider that a Social Bad Thing for a person to encounter.

But I think it’s pretty clear across the board that bad-things-likers enjoy them from a trusted source and people who decide to humiliate your character socially are maybe not a trusted source.

somasatori

@Pyrephox said in Bad Stuff Happening IC:

The only real way, I’ve found, to know is to see how people handle small failures in play, before trying to work through the big setbacks with them.

So, there’s this really interesting inverse effect that I have noticed clinically in many of my patients with large capital-T trauma: People who have experienced particularly traumatic events tend to react really negatively to very small events*, or what might be might be considered pretty minor-to-moderate annoyances by a lot of people, but on the flip-side they tend to be very blasé or even good when something major happens.

Not saying that every MUSHer who endorses this attitude has this going on (though surprisingly more than one would think), but I feel like my approach to someone saying this would be more to introduce a negative element and then slowly increase the tension. Alternatively, I would have them be witness to people who I know would react well to their characters’ lives getting ruined and seeing what their opinions and perspectives are on those events. I also tend to temper my approach to evaluate someone’s reaction to certain things, which is partially because my perspective as a trauma-informed clinician is that I must be aware that we all got something that’s a no-go.

*this is obviously an “it depends” thing and isn’t intended to be diagnostically relevant in this instance, where I speak about MUSHing; while it has some research on it under the term “trauma reactivity” it’s also very anecdotal in this case

somasatori

@hellfrog said in Bad Stuff Happening IC:

And I do! I do not like the ooc assumptions that most often come with playing something other than 100% friendly

Exactly this, and I feel like due to this I often will take on a more affable demeanor because my characters can be assholes and I don’t want to be labeled OOCly in the same vein as my IC.

hellfrog

Oh man, I took this as GMs being mean to characters. Are you ok with/do you like to be mean to players as a player is a whole other can of worms. And I do! I do not like the ooc assumptions that most often come with playing something other than 100% friendly

Juniper

People are always so scared to be mean to me! I wish they would do it more.

I promise I won’t whip around and start crying about being griefed if you do anything mildly cruel. I think players in general are pretty traumatised by bleedy targets and now they don’t even want to take the risk. A lack of trust all around.

Pavel

Apparently, my requirements for Bad Stuff are the same as my requirements for Saucy Stuff.

If I trust you, if it’s more than just an excuse to roll combat dice with your big ol combatty combat combatter, and if it contributes to the game/character’s story rather than detracts or distracts from it.

Real talk, though, my characters are often designed to fail. They aspire to power, authority, etc, etc, but I’m lazy and very busy RL so I don’t want power, authority, or anything more than a cup of tea. If you can help me tell that story in a satisfying way? I’m yours forever.

Jennkryst

Unplanned embarassment is fine, I love botching rolls and coming up with BIG OH NO things that happen from them.

… But that’s still me having some kind of say in the failure, so circles back to the control of it all. Meep morp.

Wizz

@Roz

if the embarrassment feels like the other player’s intentions were to embarrass me as well on like an OOC level, I am 100% with them. but one of my fondest memories of the hobby was having my character unexpectedly embarrassed in front of others in a way that revealed something to me about him and their character, that we kept playing into and had so much fun with later.

it absolutely comes back to trust, though. I knew that player was trying to make a compelling twist in the story, not be cruel or petty to me.

T	Tez
P	Pavel
R	ririsaru
M	MisterBoring
J	Jenn
C	catzilla
C	Cobalt
C	chilling
S	somasatori
S	sonata
L	Laurel
K	KQ
U	untitled
B	bored
B	Belle
M	mudcirclejerk
M	Mercutio
N	Narrator
R	Rucket
T	Templari

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