Just expressing a sigh of frustration at dancing around publicly asking for RP on a game when there are one or two people I just cannot fucking stand (not going to be spilling any tea here, sorry, my beefs are my own business) who seem to be omnipresent when I do so, and worse, tied up with a number of people I want to play with.

After a while it just gets fatiguing and this feels like was somewhat easier in the days of big games and lots of them (I fully welcome all accusations of rose-tinted glasses though har har).

Ok, back to Fat Bear Week.

Hands up if you feel like you’ve just hit a complete wall with social RP (and don’t get me started about bar RP)?

This isn’t really a “particular character” or “particular game” scenario, either. It’s in general.

Every time someone makes a reference to something I don’t recognize and I have to remind them I never set foot on Arx and I have no idea what the fuck they’re talking about –

And then they try to explain with another Arx-related reference

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

WTF has this thread DONE to BMD.

Jaysus.

This little board is all grown up now

@Evilgrayson

My absolute hate-favorite of a werewolf experience was playing a Get of Fenris who was unapproved by a new staffer after six months on the grid because they realized the character was black.

This was before the PB days so you had to, y’know, read descs and I very neutrally described him as such. I also made zero issue of it in RP.

Somebody thought this was un-thematic.

Decades later I’m still fucking mad.

@junipersky

We only have the one. But she takes up the space of about three cats, in some intangible way.

Sure, she’s cute when she’s sleeping

Maybe Christmas decorations were bad idea

Markings inside and out

Sometimes she bullies her sister, too.

@De-Villefort

As you’re someone who shouted out James SA Corey I wanted to note that the setting of the Expanse (which by the way I FUCKING LOVE) is pretty much a raging dystopia.

Earth has been environmentally wrecked and suffers from crippling inequality even with the existence of a paltry UBI (this is even before certain things in the show/books that happen to Earth later).

Mars is…uh, like some mad mashup of Soviets and Texas. Not the best standard of living there but I admire the Martians for their sense of communalism.

The Belters? Hahahahaha, hello exploitation.

This seting provides a shitty experience for a large number of people.

@mietze

I 100 percent have been feeling this and have had a very hard time adjusting.

My old MO was to hang out on a public grid til somebody wandered by. Sometimes they were interesting, sometimes not.

I’ve realized I’m just absolute dogshit at asking people for RP

As far as I go these days, I’m back in that “I’m wondering if this hobby is even for me” phase.

For one, I just can’t sit with an open client like I used to so Ares’ web portal has been a godsend but that artificially limits me to a single platform and slate of games.

For another, I find effort and focus are increasingly limited and I don’t really have it in me to go workshop another game character (let alone with backstory/shared connections) for some game that will fail-to-launch or just work out as an exercise in theme that fails to grab me.

I know I’ve said this before but I’m find it progressively more difficult to rustle up even a shred of inspiration for slice-of-life rp.
It probably doesn’t help that I’ve officially overdosed on supernatural* shenanigans/stories for the time being. To quote a wise man, there are too many damn wizards on my block.

*Please note this isn’t me slinging barbs at anyone else’s tastes. If you all prefer ghosts and goblins and vampires and witches and/or really specific genre stuff, go fucking ham.

To be a little more verbose, I’ve just found that banking on shared backstory with others sight-unseen (particularly people you don’t know that well) is just an unreliable investment at best for all the reasons that the OP outlined, plus the “shit happens” effect where you just have to conceptually step around the idea that people will idle out or whatever.

Also, most of the best RP and character chemistry I’ve had I’ve just worked out on the fly after a couple scenes I’ve had with someone else on the grid. I’ll happily work on backstory with people then if I feel it fits but the above requirement is something that I would just not mess with. Similarly if I run into a MU* where every character already seems to know each other for ages and I feel like I just stumbled into a group of pre-existing friends at a party I’m strongly compelled to not crash it.

And as a side note, if gamerunners are that worried about “bad actor” problems (which is very much a thing), 1) How about making it a roster game (this is very much not for me but I know some people find this helpful), or 2) Why make a fully public game at all?

Again, if this works for people, good going and I’m glad you’re having a good time. This just isn’t for me.

I tend to fall into these long periods of inactivity and I’m right back there these days.

Right now I’m sort of struggling with the fact that the only game I’m even active on has me massively disengaged, working hard to avoid one massively toxic individual (who is a known quantity to many) and their tiny cadre of people whose bigtime "pick me " energy tends to suck the air of the room by virtue of their very presence.

Note, this is just a vent post, not a name n’ shame. None of these people have really gotten in my way directly but the general level of effort it takes to avoid extremely active and connected people is fucking exhausting and it’s just one of several contributing factors to me just not wanting to log in.

Time to fire up Baldur’s Gate 3 and talk to some birds again.

@Tez

So are a lot of people in this hobby, but not for lack of practice, ohohoho.

We will have reached the top of Mount ChatGPT when it’s used to write TS scenes.

Maybe it already has. I bet it has.

Robots in your area are getting it on right now.

@Pavel said in Baldur’s Gate 3:

@crawfish said in Baldur’s Gate 3:

I’m finding it’s easier to get along with Astarion as this chaotic bundle of darkness.

There’s actually a reason for this! I can’t find the source right now, but I’ll add it when I find it, BUT the person responsible for much of the Dark Urge content also wrote a fair bit for Astarion (especially during the crunch period), thus there was more opportunity for them to write for the duo - more was planned for the other companions, but time constraints prevented it.

It’s a Larian game so I wouldn’t be entirely surprised if there’s a massive revamp of content (particularly in Act 3) over the next year or so.

@Tez said in Concordia Thread:

Also, Baldur’s Gate came out, sooooooooooo.

I’ve observed more than once lately that Baldur’s Gate 3 stuffed a big ol’ Spear of Shar in your average MU*er’s time and engagement since it came out.

There are other games, too. 2023 has been a video game release deluge, at least in terms of stuff that appeals to me.

@Gashlycrumb that sounds like an…

Escplosion.

@Testament

In my encounters with her, Min seems to have this problem with chasms. It’s absolutely tragic.

I finally settled on bard/warlock because somebody sold their soul for rock n’ roll.

(No idea why I said Sorc. Must be high).

@Testament said in AI Megathread:

@SpaceKhomeini Wasn’t that the one where a bunch of 4chan trolls turned the AI racist?

I mean maybe it was 4chan-related but it was just “We exposed a chatbot to Twitter with the express purpose that it would learn from posters that engaged it.”

A bit more on that: I worked at Microsoft Research (I was in an infrastructure role) 2015-2016 and was there for that fiasco. What baffled me was that leadership made heads roll over that shit and I just don’t understand how unprepared they were for what was obviously going to happen.

I was talking with one of the researchers who was just laughing at the whole mess and told him they needed to cast a wider net in terms of qualifications for projects like this. I mean, I had an active Somethingawful forums account since the early 2000s, that’s all it took to turn me into a Cassandra.

The people building and peddling this shit just have no idea sometimes.

That is until AIs learn to shitpost. Actually, I think they already do.

Heh. This is making me mention Microsoft’s Tay again.