An Arx Peeve Thread

[Polk]

@kalakh Heh. I absolutely get why people want to flirt with the obvious baddies. Ari was pretty much set up to do so, as some baddies were SHOWERING him with gifts and affection.

But, since Ari wasn’t a complete crazy person, I had him unnerved by it all, and turning to heavy drinking instead of just endangering everything and everyone he cared about to go play with the shiny NPCs.

Gotta temper the Cool Stuff factor with giving your PC at least a shred of common sense.

[crawfish]

@kalakh My favorite part was when she broke out in Quebec French with insults. IC.

[KDraygo]

I actually like NPCs that react with consequential actions because it makes the world that is being built feel more alive. If you have NPCs that are constant doormats, then, to me, the world feels very dull because NPCs are as important as the clouds in the sky or blades of grass in the background, just a dull color in the background. Now, on the flip side, if the NPCs are too strong, then it could become too challenge and players will feel a lack of fun, progression, or just suffocated on what they can do. That’s where the skill of the GMs come into play, which it sounds like plenty of IC warnings were given and that is all you can do. The players have to pick up on those signs or suffer the consequences. If they don’t like the consequences after ignoring the warnings, then the game is not for them. Not all games are for everyone and that is fine.

It comes down to what a particular player wants out of a game. Some want to feel like they are Gods of the game where they are in control of everything and steer the story their way. I personally want to just be part of the story, sometimes being a spectator watching what is being woven together by others move forward, sometimes throwing my hat into a plot to have an effect on not just the story but also my character, maybe sometimes throw in a wrench for a taste of the bad consequences. Bad consequences are not a bad thing (of course unless it’s death), because it can also lead to a chance of further character development or character’s internal shift. Which is interesting in of itself (Jamie with his hand lopped off) because it can spice up the story and character.

[hellfrog]

I’ll also say, Arx staff always discusses these actions before NPCs do them. I can think of a couple of times someone caught IC consequences they didn’t like and quit the game because their chars were ‘unplayable’ because STAFFERS WANT TO THROW THEIR WEIGHT AROUND.

Both times, there was a plan in place to make sure the effect was temporary, and/or the pc had a chance to make a cool comeback. But the players flounced before it was possible to show that.

[crawfish]

@hellfrog Right. It’s never ‘welp lets just do THIS to the PC’.

It’s ‘Alright, so this has happened before, we’ve warned them, they aren’t getting the message. Lets do XYZ, I think it would be a great challenge for them but also drive home what they’re doing is unacceptable. I think if they do these other things and work around the XYZ, they’ll get through it and solve the problem with some acts of contrition and RP. I don’t know, what do you guys think?’

Cue general approval, some suggestions to tailor the consequences, and some ideas about the acts of contrition.

‘Okay I think that’ll work! Here we go!’

We never make these decisions in a bubble, as long as I’ve been staff we’ve pretty consistently brought these things up with each other and hashed out the details, it’s never just one person going ‘I’m gonna do a thing’, it’s nearly always ‘I’m gonna do a thing, what do you guys think about it?’ Even in the heat of Herja’s insane amazing 50+ people battle scenes, we’re sitting in Voice going ‘okay this person rolled, I wanna do something, what do you guys think?’

Unless staff says, ‘Hey, PCPlayer, this is probably going to result in character death’, there’s been a way through whatever obstacle that’s set before a character. It might be hard, life-changing for the character, but those lead to the best growth and IMO the best stories.

Okay, crustacean off the soapbox.

[MisterBoring]

@crawfish said in An Arx Peeve Thread:

Unless staff says, ‘Hey, PCPlayer, this is probably going to result in character death’,

I think for some players, there are huge lists of things that can happen to their characters that mentally equate to PC death simply because they violate how the player views the character on such a complete level that they can’t see continuing the story in any case.

Staff may have carefully plotted out how the return arc should go, but the player doesn’t jibe with that vision and cuts the story there. It’s unfortunate when it happens, but writing off the player because they don’t want to continue the story can sometimes be a bit much.

That said, it’s completely a case by case basis, because some players operate on an incorrect understanding of the game, and lash out at anyone that tries to constructively guide them back to a better understanding in the future. Some people are just doorknobs.

[Apos]

So of course over the past 8 years or whatever I’ve had scenes not work out, offended people I definitely didn’t mean to, had jokes land badly, or GMing annoy people. That’s almost inevitable. Even trying to be as careful as possible, as well intentioned as possible, in trying to just create an RP scene where everyone has a good time, it can be really, really hard to predict what is going to land very firmly in a player’s ‘Absolutely Not’ zone.

Some players are ones I would never, ever GM a conflict scene with, or a tense scene where they are subordinate to someone. I would exclude them from any scene where that would happen. That’s not because I think they are a terrible player or anything, but it would obviously just really piss them off oocly and they would absolutely destroy the mood of the scene for everyone else. Some players think they are okay with it and just aren’t, and some players really enjoy it if it’s with other people they have trust and rapport with, and some really enjoy dynamics other people despise.

The worst, hardest to deal with examples are vanishingly rare. The person that actively seeks out conflict relentlessly and freaks out about any degree of pushback- I can legitimately only think of 1 out of the several thousand players Arx had, and it wasn’t this latest banning. And the ‘I want to run scenes just to bully people’ is also that level of rare. Sure I’ve heard of it from MU forums. But I just have not seen it on Arx, even from the people I’ve banned and definitely not from staff. The trouble is with like, 20+ years of most players having baggage, there’s way, way too many people that see the absolute worst of intentions where it just plain doesn’t exist. And that makes them incredibly hard to deal with.

At any rate, the options usually are just be incredibly insular and keep RP and storytelling to a small circle of people that someone trusts, or take a risk by being more inclusive without knowing how people will react. Imma keep grabbing the hot stove and doing the latter, which probably says some unflattering things about how smart I am but I just prefer it, and would rather err on the side of being inclusive even if it means the odd blowup now and then.

[junipersky]

This isn’t related at all, but made me think of this player/character on Harper’s Tale that decided to have her dragon’s leg be amputated. But after a bit people just weren’t interested in playing their woe-is-I disabled dragon stuff any more.

So I guess to tie it back - consequences are hard and even if you agree stuff can make them suck unexpectedly.

[hellfrog]

@MisterBoring said in An Arx Peeve Thread:

Staff may have carefully plotted out how the return arc should go, but the player doesn’t jibe with that vision and cuts the story there. It’s unfortunate when it happens, but writing off the player because they don’t want to continue the story can sometimes be a bit much.

That is a bit much, but also isn’t what is being described.

There have been many players who caught IC consequences and ran with them happily, and others who OOCly said they weren’t really happy about the way things were playing out.

But if someone’s reaction to an IC thing is “fuck you, fuck this game, i quit”, like. Okay? No one is going to chase you, because you’re being a jerk.

[MisterBoring]

@hellfrog said in An Arx Peeve Thread:

But if someone’s reaction to an IC thing is “fuck you, fuck this game, i quit”, like. Okay? No one is going to chase you, because you’re being a jerk.

Yep.

[Roz]

I had some uncomfy consequences on Arx once! Not from mouthing off to an NPC kind of deal, but from delving into a PC secret and tripping over some nasty business type of thing. I didn’t expect for it to squick in the particular way it ended up doing. I worked with it for a while, RPing around the fallout, but I found that there was something about the specific type of thing – a body horror that I was surprised to be bothered by – that made it really hard to RP. I even made a post on MSB at one point just talking about struggling a bit figuring out how to handle something.

What happened is that I talked to staff and we figured out how to move forward. Because I wasn’t trying to say “hey I don’t like consequences,” it was a conversation of “hey this specific thing is twinging some OOC stuff for me that make it really hard to RP through, even while I know it’s probably temporary.” And we figured it out! And it was okay!

Removing a character’s voice (as referenced in that ban post) is a deep IC violation, yeah. But you don’t have to take it as an OOC violation.

Frankly, I think that a lot of Arx players really enjoy the fact that the setting is full of mysterious powers and all these different figures. Access to NPCs is generally pursued by a lot of the playerbase. But in order to have that, in order for it to also feel real and consequential, it means that NPCs are going to respond in a way that makes sense for the character and for the setting. If an NPC is a powerful evil type of character, why in the world would they just take it lying down if you’re being an ass to them? Like. Idek. It doesn’t make your character ICly weak to have a survival instinct. The whole game setting is built on structures of respect for those in higher power or position to you. It doesn’t mean that your character has to actually respect someone, but it does mean that your character absolutely has experience in at least performing respect to keep safe.

There is honestly little more tedious or boring to watch for me than someone opting for “I’m gonna no-sell that this person with huge amounts of power and demonstrably little to no morals should be at all intimidating or make me cognizant of keeping myself alive.” That doesn’t have to look like your character kissing someone’s feet. Play the TENSION, which is so much more interesting.

[Pavel]

@Roz said in An Arx Peeve Thread:

Removing a character’s voice (as referenced in that ban post) is a deep IC violation, yeah. But you don’t have to take it as an OOC violation.

That’d absolutely fuck me up, a good two thirds of my RP is dialogue.

[Tributary]

@Pavel My character Sorrel, a character whose concept is almost entirely wound around singing and swords, has lost her voice twice as a consequence for poking Powers That Do Not Appreciate Poking. The second time was milder: 13 RL days of whispering and being unable to sing. Inconvenient but manageable. The first time was bad, though. She couldn’t make a sound due to what I referred to as an ‘abyssal throat infection’. And it was fun for awhile, but also it got frustrating OOCly as well as ICly.

And staff was cool about it. They told me to get a PRP run wherein a small group of us took some additional risks to go to a shardhaven and extract the throat infection, essentially. And I did. The player who ran it was extremely excited to do so, and even nicer, staff fast-tracked the approval because they knew I was OOCly frustrated and because I’d been a good sport about it OOCly. (I hope, at least. I was trying to be a good sport about it.)

[crawfish]

@MisterBoring Most players don’t do what the mentioned PC did. Most players do communicate and ask questions and work with us. We didn’t write this PC off, she stopped logging in.

[Smile]

I have many issues with that post. One of which being that my NPC was named (in the original rant) as no longer caring about the PCs and not protecting them from consequences when I’ve basically been going out of my way to make a fully dangerous NPC easy to engage with. And to have that reaction when that NPC didn’t defend them from consequences was just draining.

But the other thing is that it very much was an attempt to avoid PKing a character. So it’s super unfair on the other NPC who was trying to keep the char’s story going by only applying a temporary maiming. (Yes they were told they could get the voice back).

[icanbeyourmuse]

I feel like if /players/ made it clear stuff they don’t enjoy RPing out as consequences to their actions it would save everyone a lot of heartache (not counting those who will be upset no matter what is done to make life easier for them). I’m usually game for anything, for example, but I would rather not perma-maimed (loss of voice, loss of limb… uh… whatever else) or death (when I don’t say ‘go for it’). If my actions make my bit inevitable for dying or something I’ll be mad/upset/sad/whatever because I’m ‘not done their story’ but get over it as soon as I process what happened fully. There are some characters I still lament about losing/giving up (by choice or consequence), such as Sameera and a character I had called Tekinta (however she never worked without my at the time girlfriend’s male character who was her spouse because of how we twinned them together and for us it worked for how we played), because I loved them but there are some, like Tayani, who’s ‘ending’ was perfect for their concept/life (She was a Firan bit who botched a birth roll it was when they were doing their changes around the baby stuff so I was given a choice). She died in childbirth. I had people like ‘I’m sorry she died in such an uncool way’. For the character it was not ‘uncool’ or anything. She died in a way just right for /her/ and in a way connected to a lot of her hopes and dreams (her last child was that of one of her most beloved Gods… the Gods part was something she never spoke of since she was a monotheist).

Anyways, my rambling can be summed up with ‘Players be nice to your staff and express what you are not comfortable with’. My limited experience with Arx staff is they will /try/ giving you warning of your actions doing a very bad consequence for your character, sometimes IC, sometimes directly OOC. My experience is limited due to my own fault. I’m not as ‘get out and RP’ as a lot of people are nor do I really play the types of characters that make sense in most of the plots I know of (which is limited by my own inactivity/inattentiveness) so I could be remembering wrong about the warnings but I feel like the few scenes I have been in that involved staff is they warn.

[sao]

Unfortunately, a lot of players can’t even deal with consequences when the consequences are “have to admit they were wrong” or “have to apologize to another PC”, so… idk.

A few years ago, I was part of running a game and a person did a thing in defiance of authority and I was like oh god, another one, but the player had come up with a cool IC consequence for the thing their own character had done, proposed it, RPed it out, and the character changed and grew as a result of it. The IC conflict ended up leading to more story and the player is now one of my favorite people on the planet. Find players like this and put them in your pockets like treasures.

[kalakh]

Players ignoring all warnings that bad consequences may follow and then getting upset when they do are not a good time, but for me, personally, more frustrating are the players that acknowledge the warnings, say they’re cool with consequences, and then when consequences happen, try to argue how they shouldn’t have. Non-Arx example was someone basically going Leeroy Jenkins against an enemy that could vaporize them, accepting the OOC warning that this was basically guaranteed character loss, then, when said character loss happened, getting upset because I guess they thought they had some sort of loophole that would let them beat the enemy solo?

Like oh my gosh, don’t do that. The example of asking to adjust consequences based on OOC squick or frustration is perfect if stuff isn’t working out (though if you’re told this will probably kill the character, and it kills the character, probably not going to negotiate on that).

Edit: Also don’t try to get one over on the GM by pulling out some surprise bullshit last minute. If you’ve got a solo the monster loophole, tell them rather than springing it last minute and then being shocked that things don’t work like that.

[Nilli]

@Roz Wish I knew you when I was just getting back into the hobby. Had someone discord friend me, immediately sent me a sexual meme (not even a hello first), and I STILL just thought maybe I was a prude or they were having an awkward moment and it was fine.

Spoiler: it was not fine. It took many months and escalation to find the courage to walk away.

I think this is how a lot of these people persist in the community thought. Maybe their behavior is MOSTLY fine, maybe there are a few borderline incidents - all of which they can probably turn around and make themselves out to be the victim - and it’s hard to know exactly when or where to draw the line when it isn’t always blatant or turns out to be a series of small things over time that, actually, really add up.

[Roz]

@Nilli Ugh, I’m so sorry you dealt with that. Shit like this is why I’m so stingy about becoming Discord friends with people!!