@eddie I was going to go off on a bunch of your earlier points, but several others already got there with very similar things to what I was going to say. Plus… Woah… I just got to this post:

@eddie said in Star Wars Age of Alliances: Hadrix and Cujo:

Truth of the matter is…

And I’m pretty sure that your own story tells us everything we need to know about you. You “invested” time, effort, and in-game currency into something and didn’t get the attention of a player you were interested in, the attention that you felt was your due.

You realize that putting in time, effort, and money into another person without a business deal involved is called “being a friend,” right? And that you aren’t owed anything for it? Particularly not anything of a sexual nature? There is no ROI on being a friend to someone, you do what you do because they’re your friend, not because you’re going to get something out of it.

@RedRocket said in pvp vs pvp:

I just think that on a game where a core theme of the setting is conflict between factions, making that conflict between players meaningless or even impossible for no IC logical reason makes the game setting just as pointless and boring.

You can have conflict between characters without having PvP. Even if the rule is “you can’t directly harm another PC” there’s a whole lot you can still do to play out conflict. Your lack of imagination is your problem, not a problem of PvE games.

It’s like making a game set in the marvel cinematic universe but no one is allowed to play as the heroes or villains, they can only play normal people doing normal things.

Um… no it’s not. It’s like making a game set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe but no one is allowed to play as villains, just heroes – oh wait, that’s pretty much most comic book MU*s out there.

@RedRocket said in pvp vs pvp:

Putting everyone on the same team means staff takes on the burden of being everyone else in the world.

This is actually almost universally true, unlike most of what you’ve said. A PvE game does require more Staff effort to create all of the antagonists and their actions to frustrate the PCs – but it requires less Staff effort to deal with assholes who are just out to grief other players by killing their characters.

@RedRocket said in pvp vs pvp:

When the games started being about protecting the feelings of bad actors who instigated trouble then ran to staff for protection it all went to shit.

You have this backwards. Yes, there are some people who do bad things and then complain when they get consequences for those bad things, but those players exist on PvE games too, and they still try to weasel out of consequences. But by closely monitoring or eliminated PvP, you stop allowing the bad actors who instigated trouble by killing characters for OOC reasons – or just to grief the other players. The people who “make it their life goal to ruin things for everyone” aren’t the people asking that their characters not be killed off for no reason, it’s the people killing off other characters for no reason.

@RedRocket said in pvp vs pvp:

What is happening now isn’t working. What people did then was working. Back in the day there were hundreds of active players on at a time. Now you’re lucky to see five.

Huh… sounds like you’re not on the games that are successful right now. Sure, they may not have 100 players at a time, but they’re perfectly happy with 30. It’s almost like MU*ing is an outdated technological medium whose primary players grew up and are now adults with jobs and lives and families rather than being high school or collect students who time on their hands.

Your issues sound like a you problem.

@sao This isn’t a direct reply to you, but you were the last one on the thread talking about this subject. For me, it’s the difference between “I don’t distrust you” and “I don’t trust you.” I’ll play on a game with Staff that I don’t distrust. I may not fully trust them, but I’m willing to offer them the chance to earn that trust. I will not play on a game where I don’t trust Staff. That is for the people who have already burned me or someone who I do trust.

And I agree that life is too short for the stress of “do I trust this person I’ve put in a position of power over my fun or not,” and this has only gotten more true as my life has gotten more full.

@Apos Agreed. Any time that someone asks me to define a term that should be common knowledge, I assume that they are just looking for clearly delineated rules that they can push the envelope on and then claim that they’re not breaking the actual rules.

Everyone should know what “creepy” means, and if they can’t avoid it, then they can’t play on any game I run.

Like a few of the previous posters, I couldn’t finish reading the log. It was disgusting. The use of the Luck point to gaslight a character “because it’s funny” was particularly heinous.

Apart from and beyond the horrific content, I also found the future-imperfect tense (or whatever ‘will’ and ‘would’ and the like are) posing grating.

Sorry, @Cobalt, that you had to deal with that, but also thank you for dealing with it so that it didn’t continue (even if it led to you closing your game down).

The parent(s) of student(s) at my district were picked up by ICE and detained. The student(s) are with family, but it’s still shaking up this tiny-ass rural, progressive island community. And it’s shaking up me too even if I’m white as Wonder Bread.

When you’ve got your brain-weasels going full-bore, and then someone reaches out about RP, and those nasty scratchy bitey things quiet down for a little bit.

@Pavel I get that you’re trying to take the most generous interpretation, and I was too – until I got to the talk about ROI. I completely understand being disappointed that a storyline didn’t work out how I wanted it to, how I planned for it to. I get that, it’s happened to me, and it’s sucked.

But, unless there was some specific agreement, no one should be talking about return on investment in interpersonal relations unless it’s some version of Prue Leith’s “It’s not worth the calories” where you’re deciding that the other person isn’t worth your time and so you’re disengaging yourself.

To expect a particular return on your investment from the other person, particularly where romantic RP/TS is involved… that’s way too close to “I bought her dinner and drinks, I deserve sex” for my comfort.

As for the other situation that @eddie mentioned – I really feel for them about that one. That sounds like an uncomfortable situation, and a boundary that they set properly and which was then crossed by another player. That’s not cool at all.

To me, the core of a Lords & Ladies game is that characters are grouped by families or groups that are competing for influence and prestige within a larger feudal or semi-feudal structure – and that the characters are influential people within the setting.

Now, this could be:

• wayfinders who lead family canoes between Polynesian islands, competing for pride of place
• competing cyberpunk megacorps all under a Corporate Court – so long as the PCs were high-level executives at the corps, rather than disposable espionage operatives
• knights and barons and viscountesses living in fantasy castles
• mafia families under a capo di tutti capi
• technoknights and starship captains in a semi-feudal, multi-system space empire
• daimyo and geisha in the Shogunate (or a fantasy version thereof)
• minor landed gentry in Victorian England (or a fantasy version thereof)

I don’t think that pseudo-European matters, but I agree that combat is usually going to be a means to gather influence or prestige rather than the point in and of itself.

I would actually love to see a Lords & Ladies game using FS3 autocombat for attacks on reputation – leave any physical combat to just straight rolls, because it’s just not as important as the social maneuvering.

@Pyrephox said in On the utility of Logs, Receipts, and Proof:

There are patterns of abuse that can really on be seen AS A PATTERN, because each individual incident is small and easily dismissed.

This is why reporting even just “a creepy feeling” is so important. More than once, I have gotten reports from multiple players (and noticed myself) that a player was giving off a creepy vibe, testing those boundaries with people. When confronted, the creep revealed themselves via their responses and were removed – after they were removed, several additional people came forward to say that they had been targeted.

If you are being victimized by someone, chances are that you are not alone in this. If I (as Staff) get one report of someone being generally creepy, I’ll watch them more closely, but if I get four reports from people in three different playgroups? Yeah, that person’s probably gone, even if each of the reports is just “felt like they were pushing boundaries.” Unless it’s obvious, I’ll talk with the prospective creep, but it’s definitely going to be easier a) to be direct with them about the problem, and b) to obfuscate those reporting the problem, if I have multiple reports.

@Cobalt Absolutely no apology needed. Appreciate holding us accountable.

@Cobalt Yeah, I know that there are a lot of languages spoken by the peoples of the Salish Sea area, but our language list is really long already–and we didn’t want people to have to hyperspecialize themselves out of being able to talk to one another. So we just have Coast Salish to cover them all, even though we know that there are a dozen or more branches that are all unique (if related).

@Cobalt Appreciate the attention, because we definitely don’t know everything about the various cultures that live and have lived in the area.

Here are our descriptions of the local native languages (groups) that we’ve included in the game thus far:

Sahaptin: Native American language spoken in the Columbia Plateau area of the interior Pacific Northwest.
Coast Salish: Native American language spoken in areas across the Salish Sea area in the Pacific Northwest.

If those are inaccurate, we’re happy to make corrections, but I feel like that fits what you’re saying.

@Cobalt Our intent is to make it possible to play the game just with the information on our web portal. If we didn’t achieve that, we need to add more info. We can help fill in corner case information as necessary through the chargen process and in RP via PMs.

Since we’re touching on some of the storylines from the books, there might even be a little more enjoyment with some of the things that start out similar to how they do in the books, just because they’ll be a surprise.

Empty Night is a community built to tell stories in the modern, urban fantasy of the Dresdenverse. You’ll work together with other characters to fight against the overwhelming darkness gathering in the city of Seattle, to fight the good fight against the creatures that go bump in the night.

Staff will build the setting and set the stage, helping players tell collaborative stories of people from all sides of the law in the midst of the chaos that is the war between the White Council and the Red Court.

Empty Night begins at the end of Grave Peril, the third book in the Dresden Files series, with the war between the White Council of Wizards and the Vampire Red Court just about to start (thanks Harry), but in this mirrorworld, all bets are off as to how the story will unfold and how the characters will shape it.

https://emptynight.aresmush.com/

@L-B-Heuschkel said in Tough Calls:

The shorter and more concise it is, the less attempts to rules lawyer out of trouble.

Totally agree that the more specific situations you try to address, the more problem players will argue that they didn’t break the specific rules to try to argue that they should remain.

@bear_necessities That’s fair to disagree on, and it may just be a question of word use.

In my opinion, when a Staffer has the power to remove someone from the game, or the power to inflict IC consequences on that player’s character, they are in a position of power over that player.

The player can remove the Staffer from that position of power over them by leaving the game, but unless they do that, they are in an asymmetric power relationship.

@Pacha Definitely every Staffer has the right to decide what they’re willing to put up with. To go back to my other point, that’s actually one of the reasons that they have power in the situation, because they’re the one who can decide that.

And I would definitely look in askance of a Staffer who had a quick trigger on what made a player more trouble than they’re worth. Of course, my own definition of a quick trigger is likely to be different than someone else’s, just like my definition of “more trouble than they’re worth.”

@Yam Staff groups that I’ve been a part of have banned a whole bunch of problematic players.

In some cases, it was because we (I’m always part of a Staff team, and we always discuss bannings) had credible reports (usually from multiple folks, but not always) of creepy or harassing behavior. In those cases we do not give warnings, we notify, ban, and put up a post with the broad outlines of the reasoning (we never out victims in those posts or in the notifications).

In other cases, we’ve had less pointed reports (a general bad feeling, behavior that we felt was borderline, etc) and we have given warnings. Again, those warnings discuss the behaviors, not people, and we always do our best not to out victims. We also try to give steps to improve behavior and avoid another incident.

And in a few cases, we have banned people because they were causing more difficulty for Staff than their efforts were giving to the game. This is generally people who demonstrate a poor attitude or an inability to stay within the realm of the theme and setting. In this case, we do give a warning.

We have lost other players because of players we’ve banned, but in almost every situation, we have at least one other player who comes up to us afterwards and thanks us for removing the troublesome player. Sometimes it’s one of the reporters, sometimes it’s someone else entirely. I have yet to regret a single ban that I’ve been a part of, even if I may be sad that some people choose not to see the problematic behavior of their friend and take their time elsewhere.

@Pacha said in Empire Discussion Thread:

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.

I fully believe that you can ban people who are more trouble than they are worth (cue Prue Leith’s “Not worth the calories”), and still maintain a large and diverse base of players. While there aren’t a ridiculous number of people in this hobby, there are plenty to have a nice, large, healthy database while removing the people who make staffing not fun.

@bear_necessities said in Empire Discussion Thread:

@Ominous said in Empire Discussion Thread:

one clearly has power over the other

No they don’t. Let’s not be super ridiculous here. That’d be like saying Pyre has power over us because they are mods of the forum

Anyone in a position of power (and staffing a game, or a forum, is that) has some measure of power over those who partake of whatever gives them that power. Can a player always just quit to take themselves out of the staffer’s power? Absolutely. But while they are on that game, the staffer has some power over them. This is just an integral part of positions of power.

@KarmaBum If you like FS3, I do happen to have the stats I put together from The Network’s Western series that y’all could use as a starting point.