Don’t forget we moved!
https://brandmu.day/
MU Peeves Thread
-
@Jumpscare said in MU Peeves Thread:
I can typically identify descs written by AI by how they’re surprisingly un-specific to the reality of what they’re supposed to be describing.
Yes, her eyes may harken back to bygone timeless memories hidden within pools of mystery, but what color are they?
The color that gets the most TS, of course!
-
@DrQuinn said in MU Peeves Thread:
which sucks when you know a student did it but there’s no way to call them on it.
Get them to write a 500 word reflective statement on the essay they submitted.
-
@Pavel said in MU Peeves Thread:
@Third-Eye I wonder how long it’ll be before staff start requiring people defend their applications like one does with a dissertation, just to weed out those who wrote their backgrounds with an LLM.
This is what they get for still having people write out backgrounds that will never again have relevance once the app is approved.
-
@Jumpscare Descriptions are supposed to convey as much information as possible with as few words as possible.
ChatGPT fills as many words as possible with as little information as possible.
-
@Warma-Sheen said in MU Peeves Thread:
@Pavel said in MU Peeves Thread:
@Third-Eye I wonder how long it’ll be before staff start requiring people defend their applications like one does with a dissertation, just to weed out those who wrote their backgrounds with an LLM.
This is what they get for still having people write out backgrounds that will never again have relevance once the app is approved.
Said it before and people totally misunderstood my stance as defending AI — I’m not:
The stuff that people commonly replace with AI these days, the drudgery that no one wants to write and no one wants to read (typically descs, filler text) is stuff we should just culturally outgrow as a hobby.
-
@Jumpscare said in MU Peeves Thread:
Yes, her eyes may harken back to bygone timeless memories hidden within pools of mystery, but what color are they?
IDK about you but eyes harken back to bygone timeless memories isn’t an automatic AI flag to me. I’ve seen descs like this since the late 90s?
-
@Kestrel I read everyone’s desc. I like reading them. Writing them can be a challenge sometimes, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
If we don’t keep challenging ourselves as writers and creators, we’re going to wind up RPing nothing but Movie Nights and Karaoke, linking to images of our outfits instead of actually (wait for it) describing anything.
Rabble rabble kids these days.
On Dragon Wings · https://pern.gaslightswitch.com · pern.gaslightswitch.com port 4201
-
@KarmaBum said in MU Peeves Thread:
@Kestrel I read everyone’s desc. I like reading them. Writing them can be a challenge sometimes, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
If we don’t keep challenging ourselves as writers and creators, we’re going to wind up RPing nothing but Movie Nights and Karaoke, linking to images of our outfits instead of actually (wait for it) describing anything.
Rabble rabble kids these days.
I don’t think we shouldn’t describe stuff. I just think we should only describe stuff that matters, when it matters.
It’s the Chekhov’s Gun principle. If it’s not going to go off in the second act, it doesn’t need a paragraph describing it in the first.
There are games where you’re encouraged to write a paragraph describing every garment your character owns, every object in a room, every body part, etc. For me, “a white T-shirt”, “a mahogany desk” is sufficient. And if your character’s a musician then it’s relevant that they have “pianist’s fingers”, if they’re a lumberjack it’s relevant that they’re callused, but otherwise I don’t care about their hands.
I have never and will never use ChatGPT to do my writing for me. But the stuff I see people using it for is almost always stuff they feel obligated to write that actually didn’t need to be written at all.
I would rather (can, and do) write 3 paragraphs describing something in the space of 10 minutes, during a scene, when it’s relevant setting — than 1 paragraph prep work with unlimited time. It’s drudgery that saps my motivation to play. Maybe it’s my ADHD but honestly don’t think I’m the only one.
-
I like descs. I like writing them. I like reading them. I hate it when it’s a link to a picture.
But as a staffer I wasn’t looking for writing quality in your character desc or your BG. I just wanted them to show that your character belonged in the game world.
I don’t think you can do Chekhov’s Gun on a MU, you never know what will become relevant. Or what major super obvious thing you’ve been pointing at with your whole character-concept will somehow, against all the odds and the conventions of fiction, never matter.
@bear_necessities said in MU Peeves Thread:
@Jumpscare said in MU Peeves Thread:
Yes, her eyes may harken back to bygone timeless memories hidden within pools of mystery, but what color are they?
IDK about you but eyes harken back to bygone timeless memories isn’t an automatic AI flag to me. I’ve seen descs like this since the late 90s?
Yeah. Back in the early '90’s there was a WORA thread challenging to people to spoof this – write the most unweildy, long, screen-scrolling purple desc you can write, without it including any basic information. Hair colour, eye colour, skin colour, height, weight, age, and if you were really good at it, appearant gender, all obscure. Actually I doubt ChatGPT could do it so well.
-
@Kestrel said in MU Peeves Thread:
I don’t think we shouldn’t describe stuff. I just think we should only describe stuff that matters, when it matters.
It’s the Chekhov’s Gun principle. If it’s not going to go off in the second act, it doesn’t need a paragraph describing it in the first.
I agree completely, which is why I hate writing backgrounds now - when they are mandatory. All things being equal, I’d love writing a background for a character, but when I know that every letter I type is one more letter that is going to be ignored by staff it just kills it for me. But on games where a full background isn’t necessary or only a few bullet points are necessary, I will usually write out the full background all on my own and enjoy the process.
That said, I also don’t hate AI the way so many other people seem to, as long as it is used well. Everyone shows up to the hobby for different reasons and that has a lot to do with why different people feel certain ways about it. And I would love if people kept an open mind to the fact that not everyone shows up for the same reasons as they do. When people don’t do that, I guess that would be one of my MU peeves.
-
@Warma-Sheen I feel like there’s a sweet spot for background lengths. The few times I’ve actually written a multipage bg for a character, it feels like the staff totally ignored it. Most of the time I’ll do a bullet point list of major things, and maybe a paragraph if anything needed special justification or clarification. And in most of those cases, I actually got notes back from staff on some aspect of my bg and how they’d like to pull it into the game.
The few times I’ve been staff somewhere and in a position that required me to do approvals and review of characters, I will totally admit that I sort of skimmed any background longer than what would fit in 2 notes on a character bit.
That said, I have met people in this hobby who purposefully write a long background so that they can sneak story elements into the game that the staff may specifically be avoiding. I guess some people choose to take advantage of the fact that staff often don’t read the whole thing.
-
@MisterBoring said in MU Peeves Thread:
That said, I have met people in this hobby who purposefully write a long background so that they can sneak story elements into the game that the staff may specifically be avoiding. I guess some people choose to take advantage of the fact that staff often don’t read the whole thing.
I’ve staffed on games where we have a background MAXIMUM and people have still tried to go over and at least once the person was like “I know that it’s over the limit but it’s important” and we just went NOPE EDIT IT DOWN.
-
@Roz I’ve been in the same situation. When I was staff for a game, we specifically asked for brief bullet points in character backgrounds - but players still sent us these multi-page narratives. And of course, they’d get frustrated when we rejected their applications and asked them to simplify things.
-
@Roz said in MU Peeves Thread:
@MisterBoring said in MU Peeves Thread:
That said, I have met people in this hobby who purposefully write a long background so that they can sneak story elements into the game that the staff may specifically be avoiding. I guess some people choose to take advantage of the fact that staff often don’t read the whole thing.
I’ve staffed on games where we have a background MAXIMUM and people have still tried to go over and at least once the person was like “I know that it’s over the limit but it’s important” and we just went NOPE EDIT IT DOWN.
I made the background field a single line. Once you press enter, that’s it. Your background is over.
And I’ve still seen backgrounds that fill my entire screen. An entire brick of text. Even then, I do read them and enjoy the stories people come up with.
Side-tangent: I do sometimes get people who submit troll backgrounds, like someone’s dark secret is that they killed the dinosaurs, or that they accidentally crashed a car into a furry convention and swapped lives with one of the costumers. Those are less fun to read
-
My problem with backgrounds is that I constantly do the thing where I put all the interesting bits of a character’s life in the background, and leave very little room for interesting stuff to happen on the game. But nobody wants my 125,000 word fan fic of a fallen Ottoman prince-turned-vampire.
-
if your character has to come with a disclaimer –
-
@Pavel said in MU Peeves Thread:
My problem with backgrounds is that I constantly do the thing where I put all the interesting bits of a character’s life in the background, and leave very little room for interesting stuff to happen on the game.
I don’t think that’s only your problem. Its a problem built into the system that you have to self correct for. You’re told to make a background and usually told that you have to justify your stats. So you come up with whatever ridiculousness you need to to justify the stats, then after approval, you’re not actually allowed to do half the interesting stuff that was approved in your background for various reasons, many of which are completely valid. So you end up in this weird twilight zone of having this very cool character who will not likely accomplish anything near as interesting as what you had in your head. As a result there’s more than a few people who have made characters they really liked, but then have done little to nothing with them before fading out completely.
-
@Warma-Sheen said in MU Peeves Thread:
So you end up in this weird twilight zone of having this very cool character who will not likely accomplish anything near as interesting as what you had in your head. As a result there’s more than a few people who have made characters they really liked, but then have done little to nothing with them before fading out completely.
This is why I try to write characters who are boring as fuck in their backgrounds. I thoroughly enjoy “random nobody gets drug into a world of whatever and has to adapt” stories.
-
The great thing about broad strokes backgrounds (aka Schrodinger’s BG) is that you can fill things in retroactively as they arise in story. It also makes it much easier to write in the moment.
So go as vague as you like, justify the skills loosely, and fill in gaps before approval if staff asks for them.
-
@MisterBoring said in MU Peeves Thread:
This is why I try to write characters who are boring as fuck in their backgrounds. I thoroughly enjoy “random nobody gets drug into a world of whatever and has to adapt” stories.
This was why I liked playing bog standard humans in WoD MU*s. Just someone completely absent from the machinations of mages, the centuries old plots of vampires, the chicaneries of changelings, the violence of werewolves, the… bandages?.. of mummies, etc.
It was really neat to toss them into the world with these kind of characters and see what happened to them. Interestingly enough, most of the time these standard human characters ended up being quite popular with the supernatural crowd. It amused me to think that there was only, like, ten normal humans in the entirety of the WoD and I was playing one which all the other supernatural entities were trying to court.
@Hobbie said in MU Peeves Thread:
The great thing about broad strokes backgrounds (aka Schrodinger’s BG) is that you can fill things in retroactively as they arise in story. It also makes it much easier to write in the moment.
Or go the Old Man Henderson route and just make an insane background that has everything and the kitchen sink to justify any possible weirdness.
