My general guide for Not Being Creepy On Games, which is by no means inclusive, but will catch…at least 80 percent of basic creepiness:

1. Be honest and straightforward about what sort of play you are looking for. There’s nothing wrong with being there primarily for the TS OR primarily for the combat OR whatever, but:

2. Accept without complaint or attempt to ‘win someone over’ when someone is not interested in the RP that you want.

3. Do not solicit real life details from other players. If they want you to know, they’ll volunteer it.

4. Do not share more than basic RL details to anyone who has not specifically asked. Freely shareable details may include the general line of work you’re in, what region of what country you live in, or the sort of hobbies you would tell your grandmother about. Details that no one needs to know unless they’ve specifically asked and you feel truly comfortable sharing with them may include but not be limited to: your address, your real name, pictures of any part of your body, your kinks, your salary, and any hobbies that you would not be comfortable explaining to a ten year old in front of their loving parents who are also holding shotguns.

5. No is a complete sentence. If someone says that they DO NOT want to do a thing, no matter what that thing is, then they do not have explain themselves and you should not try to persuade them to do the thing. That includes ‘talking to you’ or ‘playing with you’.

6. If someone says “Stop”, OOC, then stop. Do not pass Go, do not collect $200. If someone says “Stop”, IC, then stop, and make sure OOC that they are enthusiastic (not just ‘will tolerate’) about the direction a scene is going in, and let them know that if the scene is not fun for them at any time, you can absolutely do something different or end it without any sort of argument or retribution. Then follow through with that.

7. If an IC event is going to involve harming, humiliating, dominating, punishing, or otherwise doing something painful to another character, check in proactively with the player, and work out boundaries for the scene OOC. This doesn’t have to mean planning out every moment, but you want to establish early and often that communication is good, and that just because someone’s PC is on the bottom of the IC event, it doesn’t mean you’re trying to harm or punish the player. It’s a game. Everyone should have fun.

8. Remember: Nobody on a game owes you anything. Not other players. Not staff. They don’t owe you scenes, or benefits, or specific relationships. No, even if it is written into character backgrounds - it’s a game, and people change. If someone doesn’t scene with you for a while, don’t assume that it’s because they’re avoiding you, or they hate you, or because they’ve been stolen away by that TS hog over there. Usually, it has nothing to do with you, but if you throw a tantrum over it, it WILL. And also, you will be creepy.

9. Helping a new player is not an exchange. Do not do it if you think you’re going to “get something” out of it, or that the new player’s character is going to owe something to yours. Especially do not page new players to see if their character is available for relationships for your desires - and if it is not, do not advise them on how they ‘should’ change their character so it is.

10. Comments on PBs or descs should be family friendly. Again, imagine the ten year old and the parents with shotguns. Do not volunteer the various sexual things you desperately want to do to the actor whose face a character has - or anything you’ve done to your self while looking at a gallery picture or desc. Ten year old. Shotguns. Don’t.

Hey all,

Putting my mod hat on for a moment. After talking with the rest of the mod team, we’d like to ask that you not include screenshots or links from MSB in this thread, or use this thread as a method to encourage, cheer, or organize action towards the other board. We know that people are sore about what happened, and this remains a place to vent about those events, but not to create or continue an atmosphere of cross-board drama. Thank you all!

As always, please feel free to discuss this decision in the discussion thread.

I wish I could get into something. There are several games that are, theoretically, up my alley, run by people I like who do things I enjoy.

But just can’t muster the energy. I feel bad, because I want to play with people and I have fun. But just nothing sticks to me right now. Hoping that if I don’t force it, I’ll rediscover my mojo at some point.

Another random thought:

PCs should not be at the highest levels of power. There are a few reasons for this, mostly related to the nature of players.

1. The people who most want to be “in charge” of other PCs are generally not the people you actually want to have that power. And often, they want it as an achievement…and once they get it, they disappear.
2. If your game relies on themes (like, say, conflict between factions or internal societal tensions) then you should not rely on PCs to enforce those as leaders. Most players won’t enforce theme, and the ones who do often end up burning out and miserable because they’re thrust in a position of “fun police” that isn’t actually very fun (ask me how I know).
3. “Good” leadership is actually not great for the game part of the game. Leaders who try to make friends, decrease tensions, and set up long-term successes push things towards stagnation. PC leaders who lean into creating thematically-appropriate conflict often catch whole loads of shit from other players. NPC leaders only have to make decisions that are aimed at making the game fun/exciting/tense for everyone - PC leaders often make decisions based on what they feel will make other players like them, or just get off their back.
4. Likewise, absent or rapidly rotating leadership makes it hard for players to have continuity of play, and PC leadership positions usually exist in a state of either functionally absent or flipping through PC leaders like a rolodex as new people show up, burn out, leave.

foksthery said in MU Peeves Thread:

@bear_necessities your friend is a fucking gaslighter who was really weird to me elseMU to the point where being on the same game as them made me super anxious and I was doing my best to respect their boundaries and drove myself batty. I should have left on my own. That was on me. You were right to boot me. No quarrel there.

I’ve removed the ‘at’ for foksthery because she’s said she’s not reading the forum anymore, and it doesn’t seem fair to ping her.

However, by context, it’s pretty clear that she’s referring to me, here. Because the previous incident of me being “really weird” and “gaslighting” her is on MSB, I’m going to summarize it here, in case those things go away from MSB at some point. You can find the details - including quotes of logs - on MSB if you care to.

The previous game was The Network. I was playing a character with wings, her character indicated that she was going to take his feathers without permission to put in her pillows. I OOCly mentioned that I found that a bit creepy, she said she didn’t care, her character was doing it, and I just decided not to argue about it. Later, a couple of people were making jokes about stealing my character’s feathers, and I asked people to stop - I freely admit it’s a stupid thing to get weirded out about, but it just hit me wrong and I didn’t want it to be a running joke. She said something about not realizing it upset me, I pointed out that I’d mentioned that in the scene.

She paged me with this big, anxious apology, and followed up with something like, by the way, don’t ever call my character ‘exotic’ again. Then vagueposted on MSB about it. Problem was, I’d never done that - and it being an Ares game, I had the logs to prove it. She tried to backpedal about how it wasn’t about me, so I pointed out that there’s no logs backing up the idea that anyone had done so. At which point she broke down, apologized (almost exactly like her apology earlier in this thread) and I figured it was over.

Later game, Santa Rosalia, I realized she was on the game. I had advertised for a play group I was putting together, and she signed up. I reached out to her, let her know who I was (I don’t have an Ares handle), and that I really prefer not to run anything for her or play with her. She was very understanding, and we avoided each other from then on. I gave a head’s up to staff so that they wouldn’t put us in any GMed scenes together if it could be avoided. I genuinely thought that was the end of it, and didn’t much think about her after that.

So, that’s the story, as far as I know and understand it. Whether I’m manipulative or a gaslighter, I guess I leave to everyone else to decide.

I won a writing contest and will be paid for my fiction for the First Time Ever.

There’s nothing quite like running a session where every player is engaged in the scene and having fun, even when things don’t go perfectly. Tense IC, chill OOC, and just a whole lot of fun from start to finish. It reminds me why I love to GM.

I think this thread is valuable as a venting thread, but I also think we should be careful that we’re not encouraging or organizing trolling on the other board from it.

It would honestly be better for everyone if we just left them to…whatever thing they’ve got going on there. With only themselves for company. That’s probably consequences enough.

@Sam-Hyde said in Bannings:

I’ve been a pretty long-time lurker on MSB, logging in occasionally just to see if a new game got advertised (increasingly rare), and I must say that it’s a good thing you had a split. Also the people who make new games tend to get run off for various reasons. Not sure how much of a fan I am of that.

This is something that has concerned me, as well. If I have any ‘hopes’ for this board, it involves the Helping Hands subforum, and that there will be room for people to talk about interesting ideas without having those ideas instantly shot down by people who have very specific ideas of how MU*s ‘should’ work and are all too gleeful to talk about how trying anything else is doomed, DOOMED and will never survive.

It’s something that I’ve heard game designers and potential game designers talk about for years and when people are already considering putting hours and hours of work into something, having a bunch of people all too ready to pour buckets of cold water on any idea that isn’t exactly like five hundred games that have gone before is very discouraging.

Generally, for me, the corroboration I need on these kinds of things is how people react when it comes out in the open.

If you get a lot of unrelated people not under the power of the accused saying, “That doesn’t match my experience at all with this person, and I just don’t see it,” then I’m skeptical.

If, on the other hand, a lot of unrelated people not under the power of the accused come out and say, “Oh thank god, someone finally said something. This is absolutely what I’ve seen/experienced,” then I’ve rarely ever seen that be wrong.

Abusers rarely target just one person, and over years, they build up quite a trail of destruction. You don’t really need receipts; generally you just need people to feel comfortable saying, “Me too.”

@Ominous Be careful about crowdsourcing too much - people have a way of killing enthusiasm for new games and new ideas because they tend to focus on all the ways it WON’T work. It can be hugely discouraging, but it’s just the nature of the kind of critique you’re going to get in this format.

Solicit ideas by all means, but one of the strongest markers of a successful game, I’ve found, is the passion of the creator and their willingness to put in the work to build enthusiasm of actual players. Decide the game YOU want to run, the game that’s worth it to you to do the work on, bring on a small group of people whose vision strongly aligns with yours, and go for it.

I would argue that games need “stakes” for investment, and a game that doesn’t have a way to keep tension and suspense is at risk for stagnation.

However, character death and the risk thereof is only one kind of stake. One that will appeal to a specific subset of the gaming population but not everyone. More, I suspect it’s a stake that has fallen out of style for a reason. What was appealing when the playerbase was largely teen and twenties students who could be on a lot, at weird hours, and whip up three characters like they were nothing may not have the same appeal to 40+ players who are trying to fit in a couple of hours for a scene a couple of times a week between a full time job, full time family, and other friends and hobbies. For a lot more of us, “I could die at any moment” is just less of an enticement at this stage. Maybe because we’re starting to worry about that in our real life!

But I definitely recommend that anyone who thinks there still IS an audience for the hardcore PvP-style of MU* go ahead and make one! More games are good, and having choice helps keep people engaged. Going back to the idea of the three-month player, I think having a wide variety of games in different genres (and subgenres) helps keep the overwhelming surge of people desperate for SOME game down a bit.

Nothing will reduce the spice level of scenes except one player or the other saying “no” – and, honestly, it should probably be outright policy for staff playing the CO not to TS any PCs.

I like the idea of transparency, but I’d suggest doing updates on a more regular basis than just the end of the season. It doesn’t have to be logs, it could be “court gossip” posts that summarize some IC events that are pushing the needle in one way or the other:

• At Lady Corkscrew’s musicale, the accomplished Lady Tandoori’s ode dedicated to Crown Prince’s triumphant hunt of the Blue Six-Legged Dire Cat clearly pleased the Prince and he was later seen inviting Lady Tandoori to join him in his private box at the Opera.

• Society is awash with delicious scandal as Lady Hippityhoppity is noted to have caused great offense when she wore the same dress as the Empress…and some whisper that she wore it better. The Crown Prince shunned her entirely in the dancing, proving his filial piety but dealing a blow to Hippityhoppity’s chances to capture his heart.

Maybe once a month or something. So people have a good idea what’s happening and why, and can also intuit some of the Prince(ss)'s preferences and pain points based on what s/he’s seen as shunning or embracing.

I actually love the first idea for a political romance game, especially if the Crown Prince(ss) remains played by staff and is flighty as fuck.

As for a game I myself would love? The parliamentarian or conclave game would be my jam. I acknowledge that they would be more difficult - I designed a political game that had parliamentary shenanigans as a big part of its theme, and it’s tough to hash out the methods of influence and getting bills passed that would materially improve your lands/family status (or hurt others). It allows you to bring in more than hereditary nobility, though - guilds, mercenary groups, etc. could all have formal positions (or informal pressures they could bring to bear).

Would the typical MU* player GO for a serious political parliament game? Maybe not. But I can dream.

@Snackness God. I’m so sorry for you and your family.

@Faraday said in The 3-Month Players:

@Trashcan said in The 3-Month Players:

I also don’t agree that all players want to stick on a game but the game fails them, and I don’t agree that you can make the game so shiny that these people will stick when they would have otherwise gone off to the new shiny thing. Some people are 3Ms and that’s just the way they are. You can make the greatest, most inclusive, most content-having, most relationship-building game anyone has ever seen, and they will still wander off to check the next up and coming game.

Just because the game isn’t meeting their needs, that doesn’t mean that the game failed them. There’s no conceivable way that a game can appeal to every single MUSHer out there, because many of us want different things out of a game.

There are many reasons folks move on from a game. I’ve just seen zero evidence that there’s some kind of ticking 3-month clock (where they’ll move on just because of “novelty” if the game is otherwise a good fit for them) built into the majority of MUSHers. YMMV.

I agree with this.

I think the “Bubble” is basically just what happens when a whole bunch of people try something out. Think about any sort of “trial” or “demo” program you’ve ever been involved with - if there’s something ‘hooky’ about it, then you’ll absolutely get a lot of people who initially show up to try it out–but the majority of them are always likely to find that it’s just not right for them.

That can be for a myriad of reasons: some element of the theme/plot is offputting, the active times aren’t when they can play, their friends aren’t interested in playing, maybe the first few scenes they had didn’t go well, or maybe the character they made doesn’t really “fit” either them or the game but they don’t have the energy/investment to make a new one, or heck, life gets busy/stressful and you miss a week of that New Game Activity and you come back and it’s like…well now I don’t know what’s going on and you just don’t have the energy to try and find out.

Your initial rush of players are “freebies” in some ways, because they will try out EVERY game that’s vaguely in line with their interests. But you won’t keep most of them, even if you offer to send them ice cream or something. What you can do to try and control what parts of that attrition that you can control is a) be ready for that rush as much as possible so that people who MIGHT stay don’t feel neglected or like they can’t be seen among the throng, and b) have an answer for what happens when you lose 60% of that initial rush, including a lot of people who were enthusiastically participating in things.

Things like the Search rotation mentioned above, or what Arx did with its chapters and broad areas of entry can help sustain a steady influx of people as long as staff can sustain the work involved in those and people can feel like they can have a nice balance of Plot RP and Personal RP.

The big thing for me is a persistent world that I can log onto on almost any schedule and find some synchronized RP with a wide variety of people. I do like the logging and wiki sort of features, but I don’t need them.

It scratches an itch that nothing else quite does.

@Flitcraft OMG EDDIE. It’s good to see you again! I was Thomas at Darkwater. Not playing anywhere now, but glad to hear you’re doing well!

Another random thought:

PCs should not be at the highest levels of power. There are a few reasons for this, mostly related to the nature of players.

1. The people who most want to be “in charge” of other PCs are generally not the people you actually want to have that power. And often, they want it as an achievement…and once they get it, they disappear.
2. If your game relies on themes (like, say, conflict between factions or internal societal tensions) then you should not rely on PCs to enforce those as leaders. Most players won’t enforce theme, and the ones who do often end up burning out and miserable because they’re thrust in a position of “fun police” that isn’t actually very fun (ask me how I know).
3. “Good” leadership is actually not great for the game part of the game. Leaders who try to make friends, decrease tensions, and set up long-term successes push things towards stagnation. PC leaders who lean into creating thematically-appropriate conflict often catch whole loads of shit from other players. NPC leaders only have to make decisions that are aimed at making the game fun/exciting/tense for everyone - PC leaders often make decisions based on what they feel will make other players like them, or just get off their back.
4. Likewise, absent or rapidly rotating leadership makes it hard for players to have continuity of play, and PC leadership positions usually exist in a state of either functionally absent or flipping through PC leaders like a rolodex as new people show up, burn out, leave.

I am not going to live up to @Roz 's praise of me, but I do have thoughts. So many thoughts. I will not share them all.

But I will say that I absolutely agree with what was up above - you need to distinguish what matters to you about a L&L game. I want a political game, and my biases are towards systems that promote and perpetuate a political game. The degree to which lords, ladies, fancy balls, or fashion are involved is very irrelevant to me. In fact, one of my never-gonna-happen “would love” MU* games is a political game centered around a free city with power split between elected citizens, powerful merchants often from outside the city, crafting guilds, and the mercenary forces the city needs to keep from getting eaten by outside powers. Balls and parties would probably still be involved, but they’re not the draw to me, even though I know that they are the primary draw to a lot of other folk. The Prince/ss fantasy is real and valid!

That said, my other bias is systemic - I absolutely think you need a mechanized system for political play so that people can risk actual (in game) resources on their goals, and gain or lose those resources. But if you’re looking to make a sustainable system, it also has to be cyclical and avoid either the death spiral where a character can lose everything and have no way of getting it back, or the dominance spiral where someone can amass enough power that they effectively will never be able to lose enough power to fall off the top spot. Players are going to naturally try to accumulate all the power and influence they can in a game, and while some folk absolutely do play “for the story” and will set themselves up for major losses or reversals, those folk are not a large enough segment of the population to keep a power structure from stagnating.

There are a lot of different ways to build a system - dice are easy, but it doesn’t HAVE to involve dice. But my three principles for it are:

• There has to be meaningful in game stakes involved that PCs have influence over. (Maybe not sole influence, but PCs need agency.)
• There has to be scarcity in resources so that no one PC or group of PCs can be self-contained.
• There has to be mechanics to resolve meaningful conflicts and the loss/gain of resources.
• There should be mechanics built into the system that make it hard to maintain dominance or be stuck in perpetual failure. Floating somewhere in the middle should be relatively easy for those players who really want to just play fantasy rich people and hang out.

The specifics of what those things LOOK like? There’s five million ways to do it, you just have to think about what conflicts you want to promote and what resources you want players to focus on.