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@Yam said in Numetal/Retromux:
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.
I was, perhaps, unclear. What I meant was that people (usually shitty staff) allow negative behaviour and then cover it up with the excuse that the genre is at fault. Which is, or at least has been, a common thing.
@Livia said in WoD: House Rules:
For me I think it depends on the reason for the house rules more than the rules themselves.
This, but most of all, I want to clearly see the reason for the house rule plainly stated somewhere. Why? Because if staff outlines why something was ruled that way, it lets me understand what kind of game the want to run–what themes they’re interested versus what bumps up against that, what sorts of stories they want to tell, what mechanics they do and don’t want to deal with, etc.
That makes it a whole lot easier for me to gauge what staff is looking for, or at least willing to engage with, when it comes to their interaction with players than things getting ruled on a case by case basis that can sometimes feel like, “Which GM card did you draw from the lottery? Do they like this plot? Do they like you? What mood are they in today? Is the wind blowing south-westerly and the moon full?” that can happen when you’re dealing with WoD, especially on a multi-sphere game with conflicting rules between splat, edition, and supplement.
Then again, I also tend to prefer single-sphere games specifically because they make the rule base so much easier to navigate. You may still need to HR something, but at least it’s going to be because of theme, mechanical confusion, or trying to make something work better on a MU*, instead of just, “Yeah, every sphere has a different but also overlapping skill list because screw you, that’s why.”
I totally disagree with the idea that WOD places are the most dysfunctional games or attract the worst people. Like, sure, the blowups tend to be super public on them, but I’ve never been on any that were as poisonous as a bad superhero game.
For me I think it depends on the reason for the house rules more than the rules themselves.
@Yam I think it’s as simple as because in WoD you play as ‘The Monster’ in some various way. Like you can play as a bad criminal guy or whatever in Star Wars and probably Star Trek too, or ‘bad people’ in Lords & Ladies etc etc. But they all still start with the premise that you’re a person just like any other in your particular situation.
WoD positions the players as monsters and oWoD even does things like having different morality as part of the systems of play and somehow I think that extra step removed from being a ‘normal person’, even a bad person, gives people that extra edge (heh!) to be horrible.
@hellfrog said in Numetal/Retromux:
yam’s point is that there is necessary work that must be done to make different spheres work together on MU.
I’m not disagreeing with that. I’m saying that there are games claiming to be WoD games that have house ruled their mechanics and the overall WoD plot so much that they aren’t WoD anymore.
It’d be like if I claimed to run a baseball league, but baseball in my league involved driving modified cars down a quarter mile track.
@MisterBoring whether you like how any particular person does it or not, yam’s point is that there is necessary work that must be done to make different spheres work together on MU. You will absolutely have to house rule system interactions, and if you don’t do it at the outset you will be doing it on the fly during scenes when players ask ‘how will this work?’.
@Yam said in Numetal/Retromux:
You have to house rule a bunch of shit.
I think this is a whole different conversation, because looking at the documentation for all of the active WoD games out there, at least a couple of them have house ruled too much.
@Pavel said in Numetal/Retromux:
I fear that the all-too-common assertion of this or that genre being particularly problematic abnegates the true bearers of responsibility: the players and staff playing those games. We can talk ad nauseam about systems and lore and thematic appropriateness, but that’s basically irrelevant—we’ve been having those conversations for the better part of two or three decades at this point.
I don’t disagree here, as there are many normal (or whatever) people playing and staffing on WoD games. I think the problem is a precursor to what we have now. Long ago no one curbed the behavior. Then we all put up with the behavior to our own detriment. Now it seems that the true WoDheads left are either very traumatized by said poor behavior and therefore trust no one, or are the perpetrators of said behavior. Then there’s are the people who are new to WoD on a MUSH and are deeply confused about this dichotomy.
But as you said,
Poor behaviour is only acceptable because people in positions of authority continue to accept it. Couching the problem as “this genre has its issues” is lazy and reductive and passes the buck from staff enforcement of behavioural standards to some ineffable ‘theme’ problem.
And while that is true, there are certain elements that may attract a certain kind of player to WoD over Star Wars. But it comes back to the historical “that’s how it’s always been” approach. If you see someone playing a Black Spiral Dancer, you have a short hand association of the kind of player they most likely are. It may not be accurate, but we’ve played with enough of them and have enough general understanding of the theme to know what RP they’re going for.
But hell, that’s probably incorrect now that I write that out given that the player who was banned from RetroMUX for violating the policy around erotic RP as a minor enacted this RP on a star wars game.
I fear that the all-too-common assertion of this or that genre being particularly problematic abnegates the true bearers of responsibility: the players and staff playing those games. We can talk ad nauseam about systems and lore and thematic appropriateness, but that’s basically irrelevant—we’ve been having those conversations for the better part of two or three decades at this point.
Poor behaviour is only acceptable because people in positions of authority continue to accept it. Couching the problem as “this genre has its issues” is lazy and reductive and passes the buck from staff enforcement of behavioural standards to some ineffable ‘theme’ problem.
