@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.

@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.

I feel like, as others have said above, there’s a difference between Player vs Player conflict and Character vs Character conflict. Yes, sometimes people get frustrated or upset and CvC becomes PvP, but most of the stress and toxicity I’ve seen from games on which competition of that sort was encouraged comes from PvP, where the egos of the players get involved and it’s less about losing the character (sometimes it is) and more about just losing.

I have no interest in high-stakes Player vs Player conflict. If I did, I would play PvP video games or play competitive chess or try to become a professional poker player. I love high-stakes Character vs Character conflict, when done with a player who you trust in search of a better story for all involved. I find it elevates the heart-rate almost as much as high-stakes PvP, and has a much better chance of a positive outcome.

I wish that there were more games that were open to CvC conflict (alongside PvE) but whose staff came down hard on any attempts to turn CvC into PvP. And if I had more time in my life, I would absolutely run the one I’ve designed.

I’m a big fan of each room having an RP purpose. Maybe it says something particularly cogent about the setting (there’s a monument about a past incident or historical personage), maybe it’s a “critical” RP location (the mess hall on a military game), or maybe it’s a place I think could host RP even if it’s not typical (a dingy alley in a Steampunk game).

But I believe that each and every room should have 2-3 RP Hooks in it. So you’ve got a laundromat, because people like RPing talking to strangers while their undies tumble – why not note that one of the driers sometimes chews up clothing, or that there’s a phone number written inside the door of one of the washers in permanent marker, or there’s a camera in one corner with a screen showing that everyone in the laundromat is being recorded. Little things that people can integrate into their RP and use to spark IC discussion or action.

Whether you’re Grid-based (like most MU*s used to be) or Locations-based (like Ares), this style works, and can turn what could just be vague names that could be drawn out of a hat to run scenes in into something that can help inspire RP.

I feel like, as others have said above, there’s a difference between Player vs Player conflict and Character vs Character conflict. Yes, sometimes people get frustrated or upset and CvC becomes PvP, but most of the stress and toxicity I’ve seen from games on which competition of that sort was encouraged comes from PvP, where the egos of the players get involved and it’s less about losing the character (sometimes it is) and more about just losing.

I have no interest in high-stakes Player vs Player conflict. If I did, I would play PvP video games or play competitive chess or try to become a professional poker player. I love high-stakes Character vs Character conflict, when done with a player who you trust in search of a better story for all involved. I find it elevates the heart-rate almost as much as high-stakes PvP, and has a much better chance of a positive outcome.

I wish that there were more games that were open to CvC conflict (alongside PvE) but whose staff came down hard on any attempts to turn CvC into PvP. And if I had more time in my life, I would absolutely run the one I’ve designed.

Depending on what type of Mech combat you want, FS3 will work brilliantly or not at all. I’ve worked on two different ways to handle Mech combat in FS3, with varying degrees of success.

1. Just use them as vehicles. This works best for 30-40 footers that are effectively giant armor or walking tanks. It’s simple, it’s straightforward, and it’s going to be very clean and easy.

2. Multi-part mechs. This works best for a Pacific Rim scale, alongside kaiju or something like it. You have separate ‘vehicles’ for each of the limbs, so that they can each take damage separately and you don’t get lucky one-hit KOs. It’s definitely more complex – both for GMs and for players – but absolutely doable.

If you’re interested in making FS3 work for mechs, I’m always up for talking about implementation of unintended systems into FS3.

I have a folder of faces and associated names – when I see an interesting face in a movie or show, I note down the name, look them up on Pinterest, try to wade through all of the BS AI fakes to find a good picture, and then slip that pic with their name into the folder.

I currently have 374 actors listed in there, across a wide variety of ages, colorings, ethnicities, genders, and pretty much everything else. So the first place I go when I want a PB is there.

Then again, I often get an idea for a character while watching a show, and then I already have a PB in mind (because I saw them in a similar role already). Then I just have to make sure that they don’t become an outright expy.

@Pavel Totally agree that it’s better to have an elegant reason why nuking the other side doesn’t work baked into the setting. But I also don’t really think that it should be necessary to tell players “No, you can’t end the war game’s war in a single stroke” in the lore. We did approach the player with lore reasons why it wouldn’t work first, but the player kept chasing the idea, and so we ended up saying “We’ve given you IC reasons, here’s the OOC reason: we want the war and don’t want to end it at a stroke.” They didn’t take it so well.

@KarmaBum said in World Tone / Feeling:

@Roadspike Those are good conceptual examples. Can you share any specific examples from the perspective of you, as a player?

Most of those were just generalized versions of specific examples. Here are – as best as I remember – the specific examples.

On BSGU, we ran into a Cylon snake, and my character made a quippy remark giving it a nickname. I don’t remember what it was, but as I recall, a GM-run NPC later used that nickname in a briefing (perhaps reluctantly, or with a sigh, or something, it’s been a decade, I don’t remember for sure). That made me feel like I was having an impact on the world.

On Realms Adventurous, Staff there was really good about putting out posts about the actions of players, and of mentioning them ICly in scenes. I remember a skirmish before a tournament and the herald or one of the marshals or something mentioned it, calling out the knights by name who had participated.

Oh! Here’s an even better one because it wasn’t all positive: on Steel & Stone, my character intervened in single combat to save his cousin from a death (it was like my second week on the game, and I didn’t want to be responsible for the death of another PC), and I heard about it for months from GM-run NPCs, including my character’s cousin and liege lord when the crew returned from the Iron Isles. But it came up in scenes where I wasn’t even playing, so it definitely felt like it had an effect.

As for the last concept, I’ve seen it happen enough times that I don’t know that I can come up with a specific great example, but the hypotheticals I mentioned before (a GM NPC mentions that they came in on a ship that the PCs saved from pirates or the zeppelin) should hopefully be concrete enough examples to be examples.

I don’t need my characters to change to metaplot or the setting wildly, I just want the actions of PCs as a whole to impact the game, I want my efforts to be recognized. One of my love languages is Words of Affirmation, and as far as I’m concerned, that’s how that happens in MUSHes.

@Pavel – I think that the distinction between the desires of the characters and the player is a fantastic one. Characters should want to win, players should want the game to continue to be fun for them and those around them. It’s the same way I think that players should approach PvP (at least when it’s OOCly friendly) – yeah, your character wants to win, but you as a player, you want to tell the best possible story with your fellow players.

I do think that it’s important to come up with ways to short-circuit attempts to end the setting/metaplot, but I also think that it’s fair game to OOCly tell someone “doing that would fundamentally change the game in ways that we’re not comfortable with, we’re happy to provide IC rationalization on why your character can’t succeed with this, but please don’t continue down this path as a player.”

@Gashlycrumb The whole idea of share points might work for some games, but it feels like it is absolutely rife with the possibility of the perception of bias. Like, “X told me that it only cost them 3 share points to get spotlighted at a plot, but it cost me 5” or “how does Y always have so many share points?” or even just “I never get into a plot, even when I have share points, Staff must be manipulating event signups.”

Even if none of that is actually true, the perception can destroy trust in a game.

@Faraday said in World Tone / Feeling:
Yet there are always players who want to civilize a Wild West game, create a superweapon that will defeat the Cylons in a Battlestar game, cure the zombie virus in a zombie game, etc.

Having had to deal with players wanting to wipe out the adversary in a world(s)-at-war game with an asteroid strike… I don’t get it either. The only thing that I can think is that some people just want to “win” the game, not realizing or not caring that if someone “wins” a MUSH, then the MUSH that exists is fundamentally over. Sure, something like it may be able to continue on, but it won’t be the same game that brought people to it.

@KarmaBum For me, “touch the world” means seeing my actions (or the results of them) spread through the IC world. Whether that’s something as simple as some slang that I created spreading to Staff-run NPCs, having the First Minister mention the brave, heroic actions of a group of knights who saved a puppy (“Hey, that was me!”), or having a Staff-run plot integrate something that I did as a player GM (the zeppelin that I had PCs defending just showed up in the midst of this big fight and saved the day!).

I want to know that what I’m doing has an impact on those around me, PCs and NPC, because if I’m not able to impact what others are experiencing, why am I playing a multiplayer storytelling experience/game?

@MisterBoring We did something like this on The Savage Skies: each adventure, we had a list of area hooks, common antagonists, common allies, current plots, and any specific resources (like Staff Notes that were of particular use for the adventure) to help player-GMs find their footing. It worked okay, we had a few people run some stuff based on that information. We definitely could have provided more of the “what,” “why,” and “how” for the antagonists along with the “who.”