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IC Consequences and OOC Acceptance
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I actually think it’s hugely common that players do not have an entirely accurate read on how chill they are with consequences. Like, the vast majority of players, IMO. Myself included, most of my friends, lots of RPers I think are great, etc.
The differences come down to, yeah, how you handle stuff even when it stuff doesn’t shake out how you want.
she/her | playlist
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@Roz said in IC Consequences and OOC Acceptance:
I actually think it’s hugely common that players do not have an entirely accurate read on how chill they are with consequences. Like, the vast majority of players, IMO. Myself included, most of my friends, lots of RPers I think are great, etc.
The differences come down to, yeah, how you handle stuff even when it stuff doesn’t shake out how you want.
Even after nearly 30 years (!!!) of MU*ing, I still struggle with this (bolded). The worst part is my brain will assume everything is fine with other people unless they explicitly say something. So my behavior persists, even if it’s shitty or problematic behavior.
Like on Arx, I was called out for being arrogant (amongst other things) and I was like: “… I was?” I’ve tried to be better, but I still have no awareness on how much room for growth there is. I all but live off of feedback to tell me where I’m at because I can’t trust my own measurements.
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@sao said in IC Consequences and OOC Acceptance:
In any event, all this ancient history aside, I think the important point to come out of that is @Roz’s point that players frequently say (or believe) that they are better about taking consequences than they are in practice. I feel like everyone has been frustrated by game stuff in this hobby, it’s not a question of whether you love stuff going badly for your character so much as what you do with the energy when something does hit you wrong.
Venting privately, sure ok. Get up and go for a walk. This week at one point a thing happened and I had to pause on my rp partner in a different scene and go mash my face in a cat. The problem is when those bad feelings become somebody else’s problem.
I don’t have a cat to mash my face into, and I feel this is to my detriment. My dog is too wiggly.
These discussions occasionally remind me of what I fondly call Dirt Road RP. I’d RP’d in other games, but RedwallMUCK was my first MU*, and given it was Redwall, a series of children’s books about sword wielding mice, it turned out I was one of the older players on the game (a whole…20 years old? Eesh).
See, the thing was, RedwallMUCK was very freeform, and character creation was extremely quick and easy. You logged in, you chose your species, your name, wrote a desc, you got a quick nod from some player that had been on the game long enough, and you were in. There were various portals to parts of the game (the grid was enormous), but the portal almost every new player chose was the one that dropped you in front of Redwall Abbey. Because it’s Redwall Abbey. This room was The Dirt Road.
Because most newbies ended up in that single room, and it was a very active game, what you’d get would be newbies rolling straight out of character creation, still hyped because they’ve spent at most five minutes between connecting for the first time and being able to play, right on top of other newbies, at which point the battles would begin. Evil weasel assassin? Aha, there’s a badger warrior ready to fight you. Here’s my super deadly poison that I stab you with. Ah, the badger has backflipped five times in full plate armor. Oh no, I have been stabbed in the shoulder (it’s always the shoulder).
This would go on for thirty minutes or so, maybe more, maybe less, often with other newbies, either fresh from chargen or a day or two on the game, joining in on the brawl. Everyone would get stabbed in the shoulder or be poisoned by the most deadly poison ever, then they’d get tired and haul themselves off to Redwall’s infirmary to have dramatic healing RP or log off.
They could be frequently annoying (we’re talking 13 year olds), and they were usually terrible writers, but I generally loved these players, because as long as they were running around being dramatic and heroic (or spooky eeevil) they were happy, and if they got dragged into an actual plot and were able to do that, they were ecstatic and would roll with just about anything.
In contrast, the biggest problem player I knew for the years I played there was close to a decade older than I was. He was (very, very comparatively, I suppose) a better writer than most any of the newbies, he could string together a semi coherent plot and make active orgs that would attract other players like flies, but he would also throw an absolute shitfit over the smallest (and sometimes the weirdest) things. He nuked the biggest org he created (and possibly the biggest, most active one the game ever had) because someone criticized the fact that he’d always set his characters up to be THE hero fighting the big bad villain (which he usually also played). He would get sulky and extremely passive aggressive both IC and OOC whenever he didn’t get his way, or another character disagreed with his. At one point he decided to just dramatically kill off the characters he was playing the moment the character was ICly criticized (he once had his character suddenly drop dead when someone yelled at him). Worse? He’d be an absolute asshole to anyone he perceived as getting more attention than him. For example, another player made a big, very active villain org that happened to be bigger and more active than his current (non-villain) org was, and he started hounding this player in pages.
The major differences between these two types of players, in my mind, were expectations and approach. The newbies I’m talking about were almost always brand spanking new to RP, they came in fresh with character archetypes straight from the books they thought were cool, they found other players exactly like them, and they immediately went to work having a fun and goofy ass fight with total strangers where they all got to do the cool things. That’s what they wanted and that’s what they expected. Plots? Even better. So long as they could do cool things, they were happy about other people being able to do cool things, and they were happy enough to ‘lose’ so long as they didn’t lose all the time and they were able to keep doing the cool things.
Meanwhile, the other character type, often the better writers and older players (though I’m generalizing, there were plenty of new players that were the worst in this department too), wanted to do the cool things with an audience, rather than partners, often because to them the cool things required being the sole hero or singular big bad villain, and if they couldn’t be that (and they couldn’t, there were, you know, other players) they got frustrated and jealous. Because they viewed their character as this big important figure that other characters existed around, they got their ego caught up and invested in the character. Anyone who didn’t see their character the way they thought they should be seen, or react to them the way they thought they should react, was being mean and unfair, and any consequences, any at all - Redwall was a completely consent based game, so it’s not like there were many of those - were intolerable. The dude I used as an example just seemed fucking miserable most of the time, with the exceptions being when he had that audience he wanted, or when he let his expectations go for a brief while and actually played on the same cooperative field as everyone else - and when he did that? He was just fine. He was just unwilling to do that for 95% of his time, years and years, on the game, so he spent most of it chasing old glory and alienating every potential RP friend he made.
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@kalakh These are just the levels of mental maturity and experience that players will go through. Just like in life when people are children who are full of innocence and vigor for discovering new things, the new players that joined the game has found this new shiny thing that they are passionate about and dives head first in, consequences be damned because like children, they probably don’t even realize what consequences were in the RP world and if there were even any. To them, it’s just a game and they want to have fun which is great.
The toxic player that was described has advanced in maturity but also fallen into the pit that many fall into. A lot of veteran RPers do get past this pit and push through to the next level of RP maturity, some much quicker than others, but some never do and those are usually the toxic players, the only thing that they advance and skills they sharpen is further down the path of that toxicity.
We have all seen those types of players, from the twinkish min-maxers who are super knowledgeable about the game system, the stats, how to game the system and perhaps even learned how to push the boundaries and rules while hiding due to their years of experience. The same with the toxic or even harmful brain parasite pests, attention hogging me-me-me pests, and sex pests on the game, they’ve honed their RP skills while also honed their camouflage skills to stay hidden, to trick players into their circle, etc.
Entering this level of maturity usually happens because RPers who were new and fresh into the RP world have become better at their poses and better at understanding the game rules, the stats systems, etc. This also resulted in other players acknowledging their advances. They usually praise this player in their growth, want to RP with them more because his poses are just so nice and descriptive like in the stories they read, their characters are shiny and strong, and they make great decisions in events that help push the party or group forward to success. This is where some of the players then fall into the pit of becoming toxic, they have tasted success, they have tasted praise, it tastes so sweet, they want more. Much more. As they continue to improve and gain success, they may feel that other players and maybe even staff start treating them like they are the main character. Some games even state that every character is a “Main Character”.
These players begin losing sight these games are cooperative games, not competitive games. So they must continue to be better than others, through stats, character status, player status, they must be on top. They are the chosen one. If they continue to find success and are continued to be consistently fed praise and accolades, this only reinforces it. Sadly, they lose sight of the goal of RP, of the innocence when they first stepped into the RP world, and lose sight of the path to an even more beautiful world where cooperative RP weaves a much grander, more inclusive, richer story.
I believe this is what separates the toxic players (veteran RPers or not) and those who have pushed beyond this layer, who have embraced cooperative story telling and RP. The toxic players have not been enlightened to the fact that in the end, all this isn’t as meaningful as they believe it is. The tighter you grip this concept of self-importance over all others, the easier it is to lose those you RP with, those who you may have considered to be friends and RP partners, lose this image you have tried to build up over time. That what is important, what builds a much stronger foundation, is the story and positive experiences that you create together with others. Games are not eternal, we’ve seen the biggest, most popular games come to a close or become ghost towns. What is eternal are the people who continue to RP, who have moved on to another game, who remember their experiences with you. Who had genuine fun with you and who you had genuine fun with.
We all want that fun that we first discovered that was so vibrant and shiny, it is just that over years and years of RPing, honing our RP skills, layers and layers are built over that shiny fun where sometimes, enough layers are built that we lose sight of the fun.
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@dvoraen said in IC Consequences and OOC Acceptance:
@Roz said in IC Consequences and OOC Acceptance:
I actually think it’s hugely common that players do not have an entirely accurate read on how chill they are with consequences. Like, the vast majority of players, IMO. Myself included, most of my friends, lots of RPers I think are great, etc.
The differences come down to, yeah, how you handle stuff even when it stuff doesn’t shake out how you want.
Even after nearly 30 years (!!!) of MU*ing, I still struggle with this (bolded). The worst part is my brain will assume everything is fine with other people unless they explicitly say something. So my behavior persists, even if it’s shitty or problematic behavior.
Eeeh, the bolded part is true, but I think the converse may be true, too – many players do not accurately read how chill other players are. It hasn’t been a common experience for me, but shit like:
Me: “Argh, stood up again.”
Person: “I can tell you are really upset, but you need to calm down.”or being accused of chronic “venting” on the looking-for-RP channel when what I chronically said was “Drat,”
have happened, and when I asked other people for their side of stories Person had told me, yeah, their takes sound consistent with my experience.
@dvoraen, I don’t see that as a bad part of your brain at all. I’m pretty fed up with people bitching about somebody else but never telling that somebody what’s wrong. Or with people who don’t want to play with a certain person so they tell that person “another time” and then bitch about feeling harassed and hard done by because that unwanted person keeps contacting them another time.
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This entire thread is making me seriously reconsider the idea of making a game with more or less no holds barred other than no sexual violence and anything else is ICA = ICC , that supports character death, PC on PC killing, and all of that other conflict.
I really like the idea of PC antagonists and letting people engage in the idea of scheming against each other instead of against the environment, but I think this phrase has me quaking in my boots:
But honestly this to me seems very illustrative of a pretty common MU* thing, which is that players often communicate that they’re much better about consequences than they are in practice.
Is this a case of a loud minority that will get filtered out over the course of time, or is this a large portion of the folks that would engage in a more character against character atmosphere?
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@Alveraxus i think that there are folks who would happily play a pvp game. 15 years ago I would have maybe but these days I just don’t have the time. I suspect that’s true for a chunk of people.
If you’re excited about it, do it. Trying to attract “everyone” means a waste of time for everyone imo. Do what excites you. That’s going to be more manageable for you than trying to appease people who are never going to be actie on your game anyway.
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There’s an audience for PvP. I am not in it, but it’s definitely there.
I would like whatever PvP games exist to be really upfront about what they are so people can self-select in or out. I’ve been frustrated by environments that were ‘we’re PvE with these exceptions that are poorly defined.’ Beyond that it kind of feels like…not my circus, not my monkeys, so something I should opine on minimally, though I think works better when the rules around PC conflict are very well-defined and have strict staff oversight (and so these environments become more work to staff, not less).
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@Third-Eye said in IC Consequences and OOC Acceptance:
There’s an audience for PvP. I am not in it, but it’s definitely there.
I would like whatever PvP games exist to be really upfront about what they are so people can self-select in or out.
That really was the catalyst of our idea, honestly. A lot of games try to be everything to everybody to have the broadest appeal possible, so we wanted to go the opposite route - be as clear as possible what we are aiming for, realizing that will limit our audience. But hopefully, those players will embrace it and might be thirsting for this type of atmosphere. There are plenty of good games out there, but we wanted to try something different.
We THINK there will be an audience for this, and if there is not, oh well. Great thing about Ares is that the barrier for entry is so low thanks to how easy Faraday makes it that if it doesn’t take off, it’s not like we’ll have thrown away a year of our lives.
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@Alveraxus said in IC Consequences and OOC Acceptance:
But honestly this to me seems very illustrative of a pretty common MU* thing, which is that players often communicate that they’re much better about consequences than they are in practice.
Is this a case of a loud minority that will get filtered out over the course of time, or is this a large portion of the folks that would engage in a more character against character atmosphere?
In my experience? It’s the majority.
I wish that weren’t the case. I would love to see more genuine constructive antagonism between characters that didn’t result in intolerable levels of OOC drama. I think that makes for better stories.
That’s not to say you can’t or shouldn’t have PvP. MUDs/RPIs do it all the time, but they have a different culture and different code in place to support it. Also, your level of tolerance for OOC drama may be greater than mine, or you might find that the pros outweigh the cons.
I just think you should be prepared for the fact that a great many MU players are consequence-averse, especially when those consequences are coming from the actions of fellow players and not imposed by staff or code. There’s a lot baked in to the culture to view it as PvP (player vs player) rather than as story-driven IC antagonism.
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@Faraday said in IC Consequences and OOC Acceptance:
I just think you should be prepared for the fact that a great many MU players are consequence-averse, especially when those consequences are coming from fellow players and not imposed by staff. There’s a lot baked in to the culture to view it as PvP (player vs player) rather than as story-driven IC antagonism.
The way I think of it is, some people just want to hole up and tell their own story arcs. They don’t want to mess with you and they don’t want you messing with them.
But there are also players (fewer, but they exist in substantial numbers) who feel empty if they can’t “influence the grid” in some way. They want consequences to exist.
I feel like a game can thread the needle and appeal to both sets of players. But you have to be aware of the split.
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@Polk said in IC Consequences and OOC Acceptance:
I feel like a game can thread the needle and appeal to both sets of players. But you have to be aware of the split.
This a good point. I think all too often there is a understanding it can not have both. While not easy, it can be achieved.
Step 1 - a game has to make it very clear.
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PvP games can definitely work and can also be a ton of fun. However, it would require a lot more work than your usual PvE games where everyone can win. Staff will have to be on point and very hands on in PvP games, to ensure that the playing field is fair in terms of rules are being followed, that any loopholes to any rule in PvP engagement are removed before it can be fully abused, and constant checking in on all players (not just the loudest or flashiest) that they are having fun or if they have any concerns.
This also means that you have to size the game to the number of people that staff can handle, not just open the floodgates to anyone who wants to join. Staff will also have to be much more picky on who can play and be very willing to show people the door who are not cooperative with the staff. This, obviously, can stir up drama and accusations of staff favoritism, cliques, corruption, etc. This also will be a heavy drain on the staff, which will have to support each other heavily and have the good players support the staff as well. It will be a challenge but can be awesome if done correctly.
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I think you have to be careful with the split between people wanting to play in their own story arcs and people wanting to play the larger game. If people’s private story arcs include stuff that would reverberate throughout the entire game, it’s no longer their private story arc. Similarly, larger game plot stuff can crash into the private story arcs people are trying to run for themselves. This is one of those staff awareness things that we often talk about. Staff doesn’t need to know the nitty gritty details of your private story arcs, but should at least be aware of the broad strokes in case a plot collision might happen.
I would have to imagine that on a full sandbox game, resolving story arcs against each other when players come together can lead to squabbles.
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@Roz said in IC Consequences and OOC Acceptance:
I actually think it’s hugely common that players do not have an entirely accurate read on how chill they are with consequences.
Most of us are really bad about putting ourselves in other people’s shoes, and what someone else thinks is a reasonable consequence may not even show up on our radar as a possible reaction.
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@MisterBoring said in IC Consequences and OOC Acceptance:
I think you have to be careful with the split between people wanting to play in their own story arcs and people wanting to play the larger game. If people’s private story arcs include stuff that would reverberate throughout the entire game, it’s no longer their private story arc. Similarly, larger game plot stuff can crash into the private story arcs people are trying to run for themselves. This is one of those staff awareness things that we often talk about. Staff doesn’t need to know the nitty gritty details of your private story arcs, but should at least be aware of the broad strokes in case a plot collision might happen.
This is kind of critical, and yes, in what we are envisioning, it would likely be low player base (because I think as discussed this is a self-selecting audience) with high staff involvement. Internally debating how much we want to use the jobs system to manage player vs player conflict or not.
An example that I use in talking about private vs reverberation is the Trojan War.
Let’s say the player of Helen wants to have a fun little plot where she gets kidnapped by the character of Paris.
Well, her character’s husband and family probably will have something to say about that, so even if she is ok with that conflict and Paris’ actions, it impacts a whole lot more people.
Which is why it’s kind of got to be one of those things where you opt-in to any consequences that anyone could conceive of as almost a blank check for walking in, subject to staff intervention if something appears to be griefing, gratuitous, OOCly motivated, etc.
I would like to think that with a mature player base, PVP conflict would be limited to IC stuff, and thinks like character death wouldn’t come along willy nilly like “I encounter a character on the grid and he looks funny, I want to kill him”.
I think it’ll be a work in progress to figure out where to draw the line between staff intervention and “let them play”.
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@Alveraxus good luck lol
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@imstillhere said in IC Consequences and OOC Acceptance:
@Alveraxus good luck lol
Thanks.
We’re really hoping that it’s more antagonistic scheming and jockeying for positions and influence, and not character on character violence, because there will be (ideally) ICly consequences among “society” that would stop people from shanking others in the street.
But we’re also fully prepared for this to catastrophically implode if the experiment doesn’t work.
