I don’t know that the term CvC solves any problems, but I also don’t see it as spin. In my mind, calling IC conflict where everyone is working together to tell a good story CvC reframes the conflict to one where the players can be cooperative.

PvP doesn’t suggest to me that the players are going to start hitting each other. To me, the difference is that in PvP, the players are trying to one-up one another OOCly as well as ICly. They aren’t cooperating to tell a story, they’re pitting their OOC wits against one another as well as their IC wits (there could even be some situations where there’s OOC competition even though there’s IC cooperation, maybe two characters are working together one a project and are ICly cooperating, but the two players each want to one-up the other and come out looking “best” from the cooperation).

And PvP can be fun as hell, don’t get me wrong. There is indeed a different rush to knowing that you got one over on another real person, not just that your character won the dice rolls.

I don’t think that CvC should suggest that something is more or less messy than PvP, I think that it should suggest that the players are cooperating even though their characters are competing.

@Faraday said in Non-toxic PvP:

That was literally the statement that kicked off this entire tangent. A proposed zero-tolerance policy towards pacifist characters in high-conflict factions.

Looking back to @Jumpscare’s original post about zero tolerance for this type of player, I want to know that they are describing an archetype that they’re calling “the pacifist,” not players playing pacifist characters at all.

Here’s the actual description.

@Jumpscare said in Non-toxic PvP:

The pacifist is a player archetype who will join a moderate or high conflict group, then do as much as they can for their faction without engaging in the central conflict. Then, when they get backed into a position where they’re called upon to resolve a conflict by fighting it out, they’ll agree to the fight but refuse to fight back, letting the opposing side win, in order to give the other players the most unsatisfying resolution possible.

@Juniper then clarified with:

Pacifists don’t just sit out, they tend to belittle everyone participating and take a revisionist approach to the faction’s raison d’être.

Again, referencing the character archetype, not anyone who wanted to play a character with pacifist beliefs.

@Kestrel kept up with the idea that this was about a character archetype who uses their character’s pacifism as a bludgeon to wrongfun people playing characters who fit with the purpose/vibe of the faction.

I admit that I lost the thread a little bit with the specific example mentioned later, since it refers to some situations and mechanics specific to a game that I don’t play, but I don’t believe that there was ever an intention to ban people from playing pacifist characters, just characters who fit the archetype of a character who is (irony intended) a militant pacifist who uses their beliefs to demean and socially bludgeon characters who engage in violent IC actions within the designed theme and setting of the game.

@Kestrel said in Non-toxic PvP:

One system I’ve been thinking about which I’d like some feedback on:

I think that this is incentivizing the wrong behavior. I think the behavior that you want to incentivize for both CvC and PvP conflict is proportional response. One of the issues with it that I’ve seen is when one character “wrongs” another, the second character (or player) turns their response up to 11 and immediately goes for the kill in order to remove the threat. That might be an effective strategy, but it doesn’t tell an interesting story.

I would find ways to incentivize (whether through XP, FS3 Luck points, public acclaim, or whatever) minor escalation that furthers the story rather than ends it. If someone says something nasty about your outfit at a gala, you don’t send a herd of cattle stampeding through their next gala, you bribe their modiste and have their next dress be the wrong shade or cut.

From a PvP perspective, that leaves the other character to respond and perhaps defeat your character… but from a CvC perspective, it leaves the other character still with the power and influence to continue telling the story with your character.

I think that the main goal is to prevent CvC or PvP to reach a story-ending point (death, utter dishonor, etc) until the story has actually come to a satisfying ending (as agreed upon by all players involved).

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To @Juniper’s point about Pacifist characters and @kestrel’s addition, I don’t think the problem is characters who are pacifists, it’s players who play a particular trope of Pacifist who constantly wrongfun their fellow characters for “allowing violence to control them” or something like that, even when ICly there’s damned good reason for that violence (like the other side is trying to eat you).

ETA: It’s like the idjits in World War Z who want to go out and negotiate with the Zeds… except in this case, they just talk about how horrible the other PCs are for NOT negotiating with the Zeds, they never actually go out and get their well-deserved and story-appropriate comeuppance or moment of realization.

@howyadoin said in Scenes within Scenes:

But the real purpose of table talk is to isolate the inane peanut gallery chatter from the actual important shit going on.

And also to make mostly one-way scenes (such as sermons, lectures, ceremonies, giant meetings and concerts) less boring.

Again, this seems like a code solution trying to fix a social problem.

If there’s “important shit” going on that the peanut gallery can’t interrupt? Don’t have the peanut gallery at the scene. Have them in their own side-scene, either happening at the same time as the “important shit” scene that they can watch freely, or RPed after the "important shit* scene but ICly taking place at the same time.

If it’s a one-way scene that again, can’t be interrupted? Don’t make it a scene! I’m sure we’ve all been in plenty of scenes where we thought, “This didn’t need to be a scene, it could’ve been a post/vignette/scene-set.” So don’t make them scenes. Have the GM post up their too-important-to-be-interrupted scene as a Vignette, and then have the actual scene be everyone’s reaction to it afterwards. You know, when people can actually interact with each other without interrupting.

I think that -in general- places code is trying to police a social problem (players having their characters react to things their characters shouldn’t be able to hear) with a code solution (making it so players can’t hear some of what’s said). And I’m generally not in favor of that.

I’ve used the Ares places code in large combat scenes to highlight what area of the battlefield players are posing from, but since as a GM, I can’t pose to a specific place without changing places regularly, my GM poses don’t have a places tag. That’s okay, but it loses some of what’s useful about the Ares places code: highlighting what’s happening near your character.

I prefer live scenes with pose rounds lasting 10-20 minutes, or at least what we call sessioned scenes, which is live for 1-2 hours one night, and then live for another 1-2 hours another night.

During the day, I’m okay with Distracted, where pose rounds last 15-60 minutes, but it can lead to me feeling bad if I take too long or my RP partner takes too long (I didn’t say it made sense).

A solid chunk of my RP is async, even though I don’t much like the style, simply because that’s what best fits into the available time. Most of my availability is after 8pm Pacific, when most non-Pacific folks (and many Pacific folks) are in bed or headed to bed. But if an async scene goes more than 24 hours between poses, or takes more than a week overall… I tend to lose the thread pretty hard.

@Pavel Agreed. And there’s nothing wrong with calling for some Wits checks and then just providing them with the necessary information if they can’t figure it out based on your clues. Maybe your clues aren’t as brilliant as you thought they were, maybe the players just had a bad day and aren’t braining well, or maybe they’re shy of putting an idea forward for fear of being wrong. There’s no shame in either just giving them the information they need, or going the Brindlewood Bay method of “whatever solution the PCs come up with was the correct one, so long as their rolls were good enough.”

Play with your players, not at them. If there’s a big speech where there won’t be any opportunity to interact with it? Make it a post, not a scene. Don’t make players pose “sits still and listens quietly” for three rounds, and don’t make them talk “through” a big important speech just to have some interactivity with each other.

It’s perfectly legit to have a big post/scene-set of a speech or first dance or whatever can’t be interrupted, and then have the actual scene be everyone reacting to it.

@Roz I usually do.

@Roz said in Other People:

the absolute worst thing you can be on a MU* is average height

I… actually like to be within the realm of average height on MU*s (most of the time, not always). Then again, I’m also the guy who likes playing by-the-book pilots, Stormtroopers, and other characters who could be “generic” if not for how they’re played.

For me it depends in large part on what’s going on in my RL. If I’ve had a frustrating day, and my warrior gets hammered in a combat scene because the dice betray me on the GM messed up the balance, I can get frustrated. If I’ve had a normal day or a good day, I’m much more open to random disappointment in my gameplay.

That being said, I’m also a big fan of screwing my character up through choices that I make myself (whether it’s choices that the character makes or the player). I also want to be able to react to the bad stuff and maintain some player agency through it. If there’s nothing that I can do about the bad stuff (either to mitigate it or to have some fun with it on the way down), it’s a lot less fun for me.

I agree with a lot of the statements above, but particularly @Pyrephox’s note about Proportionality; if my character has been doing great lately, having them be absolutely humbled can be entertaining, but if they’ve been on a bad streak, sometimes one more failure is all it takes for me to not have a good time.

@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.