@Pacha said in Grid vs Web Scenes:

I think another thing to consider is that in the “old” days a lot of the live RP was like…pickup RP. You went somewhere on grid, stuck up your LFG flag and whoever turned up turned up and you sort of just made do with that. This led to a lot of the dreaded Bar RP.

The deliciousness of Ares is (for me) that I don’t have to put up with that any more. I can go and read everyone’s hooks, pick out who interests me (and almost as importantly, who I have no interest in) and then just seek to RP with those 5-10 people.

That lends itself to more 1 on 1 private scenes that can very naturally go async as the parties go about their lives, and I find those scenes tend to be more directed and purposeful. I am going to stick with that scene until its finished, rather than just “posing out” of the bar scene when my interest/patience wanes.

I have two problems with that. The first is that it doesn’t allow for relationships and situations to develop organically. Those set up scenes never seem to be “our characters come across one another and strike up a conversation before becoming fast friends a few scenes later.” They always seem to start in media res. And when they do start as “our characters come across each other,” things feel stilted. You’re in a scene with this other person and you have a very specific direction this scene is supposed to go in, “developing some sort of relationship so future scenes can be had with them.” There is no chance that if things seem to be going sideways in the characters’ interactions that you can pose out or ideally shift more of the interactions to other person’s present.

The second problem I have is that it doesn’t leave room for happenstance. You’re not going to have the scene interrupted by someone barging in unannounced and taking the scene into an unexpected direction. This can be a good thing as maybe those already in the scene aren’t up for a detour and shenanigans, but some of my favorite scenes came about because of such incursions.

Also, I am a weirdo who likes BarP.

If I am MUing, as in everyone is controlling one character in a scene, it needs to be live. I cannot do async in such a framework. I lose emotional connection to the scene and interest. After the second day, I lose complete interest and have already moved on.

If I am doing novella stuff, which I call collaborative writing and I haven’t done in decades because I’m picky and it has an even smaller population than MUs do, it HAS to be async. Someone (I’m not scrolling up to see who) was poo-poo-ing on this style, suggesting that such a framework focuses on the writing aspect at the expense of collaboration. That is incorrect. I would actually argue that MU*ing is much less collaborative as everyone in a scene tends to be looking out for number one with number one being their character. It’s a different mindset.

You don’t consider one character in the scene just yours. All of the characters are yours and all the other participants’ to work with to craft a good story. What you control is a portion of the scene not a character. It’s like improv with a lot of “Yes, and…” The other writers become partners and you have to work with what they give you and they in turn have to work with what you give them to craft an interesting fiction.

The focus is on having a good scene that, if an uninvolved person read, they would go “Damn, that’s a good bit of writing and a good story.” If this were in person, it would be less D&D and more story-game, like Microscope, City of Winter, and Fall of Magic, with something like a talking stick that gets passed around the table with the person having the stick getting to come with whatever they want but the other players have some form of veto power. Also there tends to be way more OOC discussion, figuring out where everyone wants the scene to go, what they want accomplished with which characters etc. Also also, it leads to people being more willing to have bad things happen to the characters, since there is less personal investment in a particular character. A character is just one of many that you use to write a story. I have argued that MU*s should adopt this style more but everyone tends to react to it like I’m suggesting we sacrifice infants to the Elder Gods, so whatever.

I have closed down four games and dwindled but never left until it closed on one game. Either I stick it out, even if just occasionally popping on until the end, or I leave within 3 months of joining.

I am still of the opinion that players identify too closely with their characters in MU*s for most people to be divorced from feeling bad when bad things happen to them. I think exploring other story game designs, such as Everyone is John Dread, Microscope, Band of Blades, The Quiet Year, The Fall of Magic, Swords Without Master etc.

@Clarion said in AI In Poses:

They just absolutely are not trustable, and I think human intuition of “wait, this writing feels wordy and bland and disconnected from what’s actually happening in the scene” is both more accurate and more useful right now, because if a person isn’t using AI but does sound wordy and bland and disconnected from the scene, that’s still worth checking in about.

Wordy, bland, and disconnected? Shit. Now I’m starting to think that they trained the AI on my poses.

@MisterBoring said in Prove Tez Wrong:

Tangentially, it strikes me that Blood on the Clocktower could easily be hosted using a MU codebase.

Before BotC was a thing, I thought about running a short-run server about a town fending off secret baddies, such as werewolves, witches, a cult, etc. However, the RPI server, the Inquisition, was a thing and I figured that niche was likely well covered

I also think murder mystery/whodunit would work as a short-run server too.

It’s also good advice for Blood on the Clocktower.

@Pavel

Touché

@Pavel said in Prove Tez Wrong:

@Ominous Of course not, she never uses three words when a grunt and a withering look would do instead.

@Yam said in Banning Bad, Actually?:

Do we ever learn anything? Ever?

Yes. I learned that a few people are actually interested in a ridiculous 3-month server surrounding the antics nobles trying to get chosen as a spouse to a head of state to be.

@Pavel said in Banning Bad, Actually?:

@Ominous I think there was a guy who was quite successfully roleplaying as a… I wanna say washing machine? Something like that.

I will say this of Shang. It may be the Mos Eisley of the MU* world, but I have encountered and heard of some the most creative RP there.

I’ve also encountered some of the worst. The place tends to house the extremes.

@Pavel said in Banning Bad, Actually?:

Well that’s kind of yet another crux of the matter. What counts as being a dick for you isn’t necessarily going to be the same…for whomever is running Shang, etc, etc.

I suspect that being a dick or any sort of phallic object is celebrated on Shang, as is being one of the various orifices or phallus receptacles.

@Pavel

That’s not how your mom described it.

@sao It depends on who’s offering and what they’re into. I lean more vanilla and am a 1 on the Kinsey scale.

@Roz said in Banning Bad, Actually?:

idk i feel like my counterpoint for this is “if you don’t want to get banned early and often from a public game, might i suggest simply being on your best behavior?”

I don’t think “best behavior” is a realistic standard for a recreational hobby. How about “decent behavior?”

@Pavel said in Banning Bad, Actually?:

I think this may be another crux (can an argument have more than one crux?) of the argument. The difference between something being right and someone having the right – and in this instance whether there’s a difference at all.

Civil Law countries have the Prohibition of Chicane which holds that using your rights to inflict harm on another is illegal. So, people have to use their rights right for it to be alright, right?

@Yam That’s not unsurprising. The majority of people are understanding and considerate, so they want people to be direct and honest with them. However a minority of people are not understanding or considerate, and the understanding and considerate people don’t want to roll the dice on whether the person they are being direct and honest with is the former rather than the latter.

@Wizz said in Banning Bad, Actually?:

@Ominous said in Banning Bad, Actually?:

you’re in the minority there for a reason that I’m not going to spend pages and pages spelling out for you.

A rather sizable minority. It’s not like I am dying on a hill alone here, and a few of those taking similar stances as me are not members of the forum that people would normally tag as “unreasonable” or “a nuisance.”

“made me feel a certain kind of way” does not translate to anxiety, it translates to frustration, as he explained himself. it’s just a passive aggressive way of saying “it pissed me off”

I just reread all of Warma Sheen’s posts. I do not see them stating at any point that “made me feel a certain kind of way” was a statement of frustration. In fact, they state it was exactly what I read it as:

@Warma-Sheen said in Empire Discussion Thread:
And I felt weird about having a bunch of open jobs cause I thought maybe I was being too much of a burden, so I closed a bunch of them down.

That seems like anxiety not frustration. Maybe I missed something. Can you point to me where Warma Sheen says that was a statement of frustration?

you’re irritating more people than you’re probably aware of.

Probably. I don’t read social situations very well and will ask out of the blue whether I am bothering someone just to make sure that hints aren’t being dropped that I am impervious to.

@Aria said in MU Peeves Thread:

At that point it’s not harassment, it’s just the other person being annoying by not taking the hint. And my dudes, dropping a hint is not clear communication. It’s deliberately vague communication, which is hard enough in person when there’s also body language and facial expressions and tone to pick up on. Text has none of those things. Don’t drop hints, cross your fingers, touch your toes, and hope the other person clues in to what you’re (not) saying. Say what you mean. You can be nice about it! But say what you mean. The internet is not going to burn to the ground if you tell someone “Oh! Thanks for the offer, but I’m not really up for that.” or even just “No, thank you.” the way we were all taught when we were, like, five.

Yes! Exactly!

You dropping what would be a very clear hint to anyone else that you aren’t enjoying our interactions:

Me who is terrible at social interactions:

@Faraday said in Banning Bad, Actually?:

@Tez said in Banning Bad, Actually?:

that we might all be coming into this from different perspectives based on our own experiences with the people involved and the situation at large. I don’t think it’s really a pure abstract thought exercise here. This is coming from a very specific example.

Can’t speak for anyone else obviously, but I have been approaching it as a purely abstract thought exercise. I don’t know the game in question or anyone involved in the original situation, and the log we saw alluded to some degree of prior history that we have no context for. Maybe there was just a bad vibe. I have no idea.

Same.

For those who are on the side of ban early and ban often, might I suggest running private, whitelist server for just your friends? Or maybe have a rigorous review process requiring an interview between staff and an applicant before they can CG?

Anyways, I am all for banning someone when they’re being a shit. I just didn’t think Warma Sheen was being a shit in the text provided.

@helvetica

I am pretty sure that’s implied by the fact that I made the demand. Either that, or I’m too lazy to do it myself.