There is a game I am on where I signed up for an event. At the event, was a particular person.

This person, for want of a better word, has a bit of a fan club on this game. People talk about this person a lot; they seem to have a lot of close friends, and people respond super enthusiastically when they do things, log on etc. etc.

I do not begrudge this person any of this, and to be honest, they do not seem to do anything to encourage it. From my point of view they do not do anything to -warrant- it, either. But, I am prepared to accept that is very subjective.

In this event, which was just a one-shot adventure-type thing with some light combat, I ended up nearly walking out part way through because this person’s fan club was so busy gushing over this person and trying to interact with this person that my character was totally ignored.

This happened multiple times, where the rest of the group just played as though my character was not there. As an example, my character did X thing on their turn. I checked it with the GM, rolled for it, it was in my pose. Nobody referenced it in their pose, acknowledged it had happened, or anything like that.

In the next round, this person does a very similar thing (similar enough to the point of being redundant in the circumstances). The rest of the group are falling over themselves to (ic and ooc) tell this person how clever they are, how cool and badass their idea was. Even the GM referenced them doing this thing in their pose, ignoring that my character had already done it.

It’s not a major thing, but man is it irritating. I wasn’t going to mention it, but the talk of cliquey groups brought it all rushing back! I have been kind of light on the details as I don’t dislike any of these people or want them to feel bad. However, if the purpose of the scene is a self-congratulatory, feel-good session with your in-group, maybe don’t paste it as a public event and invite people you’re not really interested in including.

I have realised that from years of playing in WoD MUSHES, I am so conditioned to staff wanting to breathe down people’s necks about every little thing that I get incredibly anxious when I see other people RPing about something my character did—even something super innocent. It brings me out in hives that someone is about to send me a shitty job to tell me I am WRONG and BAD.

I think it is nice that games are a lot more chill these days, but I think it probably speaks volumes about the general state of WoD games that my most comfortable state is to be completely under the staff’s radar because staff on a WoD game paying close attention to what you’re doing is almost universally bad.

I normally do not struggle too much with the “brain weasels” but walking into an open scene only to have everyone in it check out within a few poses is a special kind of disheartening.

I am rationally certain that it is nothing to do with me and I just happened to walk into a scene that was already trailing off, but it is harder to convince the self destructive demon on my back.

I always find it a bit creepy when it is clear someone has someone else on watch and they start gushing over them on the channel when they log in, but haven’t even ; waved or said ‘hi’ yet.

It also kind of bums me out if I end up logging in day after day and get tumbleweeds, but there is very clearly a group that are friends and treat each other logging on like the second coming of Jesus or something.

Obviously there is nothing objectively wrong with these behaviours and people can say hi to who they want. But, it is a peeves thread and I am allowed to find the behaviour personally irritating, also!

So, in conclusion: Stay far, far away from this game is what I am taking away?

I have had a great time playing Arx in the past before and I definitely met and RP’d with a lot of lovely people there. I think the two (slightly related) things that I really struggled with on Arx were:

• There is often a lot of what I will call “tonal whiplash” where there is a terrible civil war, or some other disastrous thing going in in the background, but all the player events going on day to day are like a pet fashion show or a slam poetry contest. I understand why this happens and of course anyone who runs anything on a MUSH these days is an angel, but I sometimes just wish there was a bit more “bite” to some of the day to day RP. Which, I am sure someone will tell me it is there but…(see point 2)

• Lack of (genuine) variety in Roster characters. I remember a period (not recently, but I don’t know if it has changed) where there were like five roster characters who were a variation on “vaguely piratical sailor girl with a brusque attitude but a heart of gold” or “gruff bearded warrior with a large sword, a drinking problem and a dark history he never talks about”.

Which, again, I get isn’t anybody’s fault. It was a bit better when there was an option to make an OC, but I get this also led to its own raft of problems with some kind of egregious stuff sneaking by at times. Or maybe I am just too picky.

I think the staff do a good job and have a massive amount on their plate, but I found these things really had me struggling to get back into it when I have tried. I think if they could get a handle on the rosters at least, that would make the game more appealing to new players again, since the numbers seem to have dwindled a lot.

Just a couple of thoughts!

Pacha

It just struck me…

A thriving community springs up around the sole source of an increasingly rare resource, presided over by an influential female figure. However, behind the scenes, a less popular and well-known figure secretly controls access to this resource, and a power struggle ensues. The unknown figure begins implementing a series of embargoes, blocking access to the resource unless the leading female figure publically validates and acknowledges their control.

Is this the story of Liberation MUSH, or the opening act of Mad Max 3: Beyond Thunderdome?

Peeve of the day is people relentlessly humblebragging on channels about how important they are at their job.

Should I create my own MU for that?

It doesn’t really seem shady to me? On reading it, it just seems to say that they have the right to use anything you create or put on the game or wiki. It’s non-exclusive, so you aren’t losing any right, just giving them one, and it’s non commercial, so they can’t use it to make money or for business purposes.

To me, obvious uses of it would seem to cover situations like:

• You volunteer as build staff. Some time later you fall out with the game’s administration and leave. You cannot demand they delete all those rooms you made, as you have given them a license to use that writing.

• Your character becomes the vampire prince. Two weeks later you vanish from the game and are never heard from again. The staff is allowed to turn your PC into an NPC until they eventually replace them. You have given them a license to do this.

• You volunteer to create a number of wiki pages and help the staff with wiki organisation. You later become uncontactable. The staff is allowed to alter your design, use the template elsewhere on the site, or replace what you did with something altogether different.

So, it is a bit overly formal, but there are definitely plenty of legitimate use cases for having such a clause.

Interesting further info, for those following along:

https://imgur.com/a/O2BUQdA

@Pavel

I would (gently, politely) just point out that I did immediately qualify the text you have quoted with:

“Of course, Ada is welcome to decide that is more effort than they are willing to put forth.”

@MisterBoring @Wizz

ActuaIly, this has been very interesting to me, in understanding how much “the numbers” seem to be a part of how I define the success or not of a game.

My initial thinking was definitely based on this deep assumption that one should be casting the widest possible net, pulling in the greatest possible amount of people and trying to be all things to all people. It’s probably based on my formative MUSH experience being in the big, multi-sphere WoD pit.

However, now I think of it I can totally see that not all games should or would strive for that. However, in this case looking at the available roster, it does seem like Ada is hoping to achieve a decently sized player base eventually.

In any case. Perspective broadened.

@Wizz @helvetica @Trashcan

To be absolutely clear, I totally respect Ada’s right to run their game as they like. As long as they are paying for the server they can declare that everyone has to play while standing on one foot and balancing a rubber chicken on their head, if that is their wish!

I am just saying that it is not how I would run a game and that I think it might end up in them banning people that could be put back on the right track with only a pretty small amount of effort. Of course, Ada is welcome to decide that is more effort than they are willing to put forth.

My assumption (perhaps false!) is that when opening a game one wants to develop a large and diverse base of players. So for me, banning people who don’t necessarily need to be is kind of a negative thing, because it is then a player (and perhaps their friends) that I don’t have.

Of course, there is an argument to be made that curating a smaller player base of very well behaved players and cutting others at the early stage of a problem behaviour is actually a better way forward, which is perhaps what Ada is aiming for.

So perhaps that is also colouring my opinion of whether it was “good” to ban the person. In any case, I fully support Ada’s choice to ban or not ban who they like. “Thin Skinned” may have been a poor choice of words previously, perhaps I meant something closer to “reactive”.

@Wizz

From my experience of staffing games and also having run a (reasonably) successful Ares game for a while, I can agree that it would be lovely if everyone approached staff with compassion and respect.

However, we’re all painfully aware we don’t live in a perfect world, and even great players can sometimes have a day where they have a shitty attitude.

I don’t know the whole saga of the interaction between these people. But, in this conversation, the player definitely made a couple of catty comments, which I can totally accept the staffer wanting to set a boundary about.

My point is that going straight to a ban felt a little extreme. I would probably have said something like “Hey, it’s not okay to talk to me like that. I’m done with this for today, but if you want to approach me again tomorrow with a better mindset, I am open to a discussion”.

Obviously, it is Ada’s game and they are paying to keep the lights on, so they can do as they like. But if they are going to ban everyone who ever makes a slightly backhanded remark, they may end up banning a lot of people.

I think it’s always worth mentioning that there are thriving non-english-speaking MU communities out there as well, operating in languages like Chinese, Spanish, German etc. and some of these are pretty busy even compared to the English-language ones.

From reading the log, I think @Warma-Sheen comes across as a little disrespectful and impatient toward the staffer. Had I been the staff member in that situation, I would definitely have asked them to go away, come back, and try again after an attitude adjustment.

However, Ada does also come across as a little thin-skinned here. It does feel like she has jumped to the nuclear option very quickly. If that is her definition of brow-beating, she should prepare to feel that way a lot with the average MU crowd, honestly.

@tsar

Hey there!

I am slightly amazed you figured this out at all, let alone after so much time! But upon referring to this post:

https://brandmuday.mythicus.net/topic/121/tsar-s-playlist?_=1761253660522

I think you are actually spot on, so great detective work!

As I mentioned in the post, I don’t dislike you (or anyone else from that scene) in any way. I was just using this thread for its purpose, which was to vent about some irritation I had about it on the day.

Honestly, I have not spent the intervening time stressing about it or plotting heinous acts of revenge, so we are all good as far as I am concerned! In fact, I would go so far as to say that my gripe was not with you at all, so much as how the others in that scene responded to your character vs how they responded to mine.

TO CLARIFY! (since I now remember this!) I think you absolutely warrant people being happy to see you. But despite my being as nice as I knew how to be on that game, what I remember I would often see was…

Pacha logs on

Pacha greets folks

crickets

Tsar logs on, a short or a long time after

It is one minute after midnight on January first

Which I completely appreciate is an unreasonable thing to be grumpy about, especially given that this is mostly down to random chance, people can say hi to whom they like, I don’t know who was awake and at their screens yada yada…so it could absolutely have been an “all in my head” thing.

But in my defence, this is a peeves thread, not a fully justified and reasonable grievances thread!

In any case, yes, I am all good, and I hope you are too.

When I am on a game I usually bring a friend or two along with me, and I primarily play with my friends. If there are characters I then meet, roleplay with and enjoy, I will also play with them. Those people, I usually seek fairly proactively to become friendly with also, because this is my hobby, and I like to be friends with the people I do my hobby with.

There are inevitably characters on a game that I do not know, and whose profile/RP hooks don’t interest me. I don’t feel the need to proactively audition all of those people “just in case” they turn out to be interesting. I try and sign up for events as much as possible, and I find that a good, low commitment way to check out a handful of people all at once, and then follow up with people who seem cool.

That said, if someone approaches me and specifically asks to RP I will almost never say no. There are only a very few people in the hobby I actively try and avoid playing with, and all of those people are extremely aware of the fact as far as I am aware!

@Wizz

I do agree in one sense. I am craving, desperately craving, anywhere to get my WoD/Dark Urban Fantasy fix, but there are only a couple of kind of dubious places to get that right now.

The beauty of Ares is that it allows someone with no technical expertise to get a game up and running (I did this!) as long as you use the tools provided and don’t try to reinvent the wheel. So it allows a lot of games that would never have seen the light of day previously to actually exist.

Because Ares allows plugins, my understanding is that it can theoretically support any number of RPG systems; it just needs someone to create and maintain the plugin that others then use. If someone was to make a fully working WoD plugin for Ares, I have no doubt the games would come.

However, I think FS3 is just so flexible that it can adapt to any number of settings, and also, there are some experts who have got the combat on it down to such a science that most things can be “made to fit” FS3 even if it isn’t their intended/natural home.

I think we are more likely to see WoD but made to work in FS3 before we see fully featured WoD in Ares, for that reason.

@MisterBoring

What do you mean by clique building? So often I see people complaining about what they consider to be cliques, but which I would just consider to be “groups of friends playing together”.