@Faraday said in AI PBs:

me. These tools are literally destroying the livelihoods of people I care about right now and threatening to do the same to more people in the future. So it just really hurts to see people shrug and be like: “Eh, whatever, I’m gonna still play with it because it’s a fun toy.” I wish more people would take a principled stand against it, because that can actually make a difference to their bottom lines.

Honestly, I don’t know how you can say this and then also say

@Faraday said in AI PBs:

I purchase from Amazon and thereby enable corruption and exploitation. I have reasons, but they’re kinda selfish. I can at least admit it.

when the exact same argument could be made for Amazon and I would argue those very real people being exploited are being hurt a bit worse here.

I’m thoroughly confused by what the argument is at this point. Is it ok to use AI as long as i acknowledge it’s harmful to artists?

@dvoraen ok but what game is that???

@MisterBoring It might be a lack of trust thing? I can count on one hand the # of times I’ve been told that and didn’t have someone freak the fuck out when that exact same consequence became a Real Possibility. I actually don’t even need one hand, I could use one finger.

@Juniper I’ve always felt that while people say they want consequences in their RP, a vast majority of people don’t really want it. At least not permanent consequences. I think most people just want to be able to write a little angst/drama into their RP for a couple of scenes, get some attention, and then move on from it. There’s a very rare few that truly want their characters to die, or to suffer major long-lasting and/or permanent consequences as a result of their RP.

I do think that circles back to tone and what people are trying to play. I don’t think a grimdark game where consequences are char-death or extreme permanent damage would be very successful, because most people want to play consequences that they can overcome (if they want consequences at all).

@Tez so it’s you eh???

@MisterBoring said in World Tone / Feeling:

Like my idea for a post-apocalyptic game where the remaining people on the world live in and around a huge metal tower. The people who have all the power live above the smog clouds choking the world below, and have access to the remaining places above the clouds, including the last bits of fertile land and potable water. The rest of the people live below, in claustrophobic spaces where their survival is only guaranteed by toiling to get access to resupply of the filters that keep the smog out of their cramped quarters. The lower class use power armor suits to try and clean the world, much like the Chernobyl liquidators, while the upper class vie for control of the remaining clean resources and do what they can to keep the lower class from climbing the tower and destroying everything.

I had a similar idea for an anthology game I was thinking of creating. Basically you are in the tower and the only way to climb is to participate in virtual reality “simulations” where your goal was to amuse the people in the upper floors, kinda Hunger Game-y except you were a different character in each sim. The purpose was to die, repeatedly and violently and epically. I just couldn’t figure out what people would do when they were killed off and waiting for everyone else.

NGL one of my favorite thing about Horror 2 was the fact that if you were in an open scene, it was fair game for the storyteller to drop in with something unannounced, but she made that pretty clear right out of the gate. It certainly made it feel like there was something that could happen at any second and was an easy way to rope people into plot.

@DrQuinn said in Player Ratios:

@bear_necessities I always felt like there should be a way for players to indicate to staff if they wanted to be involved in things or not but I have no real ideas on how to implement it. Like you could do metaplot y/n because there’s always people who are dying to get in on things, then you have people that are just there to do social scenes and never want to know there’s a dark god hanging out at the bookstore, etc.

I am that person that loves to pull people into things, though. Did you take a point of map making on your sheet for a lark? Boom, now there is a plot where you have to read a MAP and SAVE THE DAY.

Though I can see how if you made your map making pc just to romance your friend the explorer, you might be annoyed if the Gnome King interrupts your date to make you go get a group together to save the Kingdom of Butterbright.

RP prefs probably help for that. Honestly when I was running games and STing, I would just poke people and be like “hey do you want to get in on this” versus dumping plot into their lap.

Maybe back in the day when games had like 500 players it was really hard to identify the people that were lost to timezones or too shy to ask for RP, but I just don’t think that’s the case anymore. But also it really isn’t my job as a game admin to keep track of your pretendy fun-time points to determine if you’re having enough pretendy fun-time so please just reach out and poke if you aren’t getting plot but want it.

@Pavel said in Player Ratios:

metric of some kind to identify people struggling to either find time or social energy so that staff can make a point of drawing them into things

I don’t think it’s that hard to spot these players without a point system and if they already don’t have the time or social energy to play why would they want to be drawn into things?

I certainly don’t have the time or social energy to play right now and the last thing I’d want is a GM to single me out and be like YOU THERE, HERE’S PLOT because then I feel forced to spread that plot and I don’t have the time or social energy to do that and bye I’m done lol

If you think players act entitled to plot now just wait until you introduce a point system lol my bet? You’ll burn out STs even faster this way.

@Ominous I actually don’t play TT so that’s probably why lol

@Prototart said in World Tone / Feeling:

My white whale is and will probably always be an at least canon-adjacent superhero game that is relatively light and acknowledges the genre was built on sex

Reply

Not to double post but this game exists and is listed here https://arescentral.aresmush.com/games bet you can’t figure out which one it is lol

@Ominous Ooo I like this chart, thanks!! I think I’m on the noble side of things but I also like grimbright.

I was mostly wondering if the general consensus was ‘the world right now is grim and so I want to stay away from that’ when I asked this question. I don’t think I’m capable of playing in a fully grim/grimdark setting myself, and there’s a big part of me that doesn’t even want to play in a modern setting anymore even if the “real” world politics are ignored. But I also don’t want to play in a modern setting where everything is happy/bright? Because it just doesn’t make sense for me lol

@DrQuinn I too wish for a good supernatural cowboy game. Give it to me.

We’ve talked a lot about the MUSHes we’d like to see and such, but today I’m less curious about the game genre and more about the general tone of the game you want to play. At least, I hope tone is the right word for what I’m trying to convey here, words are hard. Anyway, wondering if you are you looking to play in a world that is grim/dark, one of scary horror or dystopian nightmare, something more romance based, or maybe something lighter, something that is hopeful or happy and positive? Something else entirely? Mostly interested in what people are in the mood to play lately.

@Solstice

My thoughts … spoiler if you haven’t finished the game obv.

Spoiler

@dvoraen said in General Video Game Thread:

I need to know what everyone who has finished Clair Obscur — Expedition 33 felt about the story right meow.

(No spoilers. FEELINGS ONLY.)

I had a lot.

33/10 story.

100000000/10 rating.

I’m devastated. This game is going to leave a hole, and I don’t know if there’s another game out there that can fill it right now.

@Aria said in Echoes of the Past: Problem Players:

o continually blasting NSFW content on public channels, to ranting about other games until the owner of Song of Blood had to create a channel just to contain their list of grievances to a single locatio

Why wasn’t this person banned? I mean, instead of catering to someone, just ban them. Sounds like a lot of this could be avoided with liberal usage of the banhammer.

@KarmaBum said in General Video Game Thread:

@dvoraen TY for posting this recommendation. I was on the fence about paying for a new game, but you tipped the scales and I bought it a few days ago.

I have not finished it. I am going to!!

But I was playing last night, having a grand time. The gameplay is fun, the scenery is gorgeous, the characters and voice acting are spot on, the universe is intriguing. I’m super loving this! I’ve hit my stride! Each party member has a fun mechanic, I love the synergy of the fight mechanics and how I customized my team to work together and then–

I had to take a wee break after an emotional gut-punch (I’m sure y’all can guess~).

Will tap back in once I get to the end - which, to be clear, the beautifully sad story has only made me more afraid and excited to uncover. I hope it keeps being this devastating.

So entirely immersed in this world, I have cried and laughed and cried and cried, and I just got to that same emotional gut-punch and had to take a break but WANT TO PLAY AGAIN SO BAD!!!

I usually spoil myself because I hate surprises and spoilers don’t really ruin the experience for me, but I am doing everything I can not to spoil myself this time around and it’s slowly killing me. I WANT TO KNOW EVERYTHING lol

@Faraday I do see chatGPT being used a lot now for marketing and “personal branding”. A majority of the stuff I see on LinkedIn is just chatGPT shit anymore. A few business consultants I’ve worked with have suggested using chatGPT to assist with everything from marketing strategies to codes of conduct for employees. So I don’t think it will be too long before they churn a profit off of that market alone.