@shit-piss-love said in MU Peeves Thread:

@Cobalt said in MU Peeves Thread:

@shit-piss-love Run something invite only or semi-invite only.

That’s not a bad idea. I keep out of OOC circles in the community but I like the people here well enough. Maybe I’d open it up to people here to start and let y’all refer others.

I just want to be the brief voice of dissent:

There are people I don’t particularly want on my game for various reasons, and who I have banned or ‘disinvited’ before they finished applying.

But they are not the majority, and I cannot overstate the joys of running a public game and meeting people who never would have made it there if we were on an invite-only system. The absolute magic of finding a whole group of players who have amazing chemistry, who are delightful OOC, who build story and theme in a way you never could’ve imagined - who you had NO IDEA existed despite decades of doing this - is truly fantastic. It’s a big part of why I build and run games.

My experience on invite-only games is that you’ll still have player problems. People who get along with A won’t get along with C just because B is friends with both. Invites don’t prevent them, IME.

It does take some thick skin and the willingness to have some hard conversations and close doors to run a game - public or private. But that’s honestly, for me at least, such a small, small part of it. The joys are really immense, too.

I think the entire Ares discord community deserves a shout out for being welcoming, supportive, and willing to help each other fail forward in lots of code, configuration, design, and other ways.

@Cobalt said in Why is Pack closing?:

Lileas – Player was snarky at me because I originally didn’t allow otters or seals on the game, because they felt too “fae” for me. And while I agreed there was a good point that I allowed cats and foxes, the way they presented the argument was really troll-ish, so I asked them to leave. In hindsight, I’d probably just tell them to be less sarcastic and let them play. But I got really tired of the “lolol, you allow were-foxes but noooo all seals are selkies” responses.

You super don’t need my permission or anything , but man-- if you’re feeling guilty over this one, I wouldn’t.

Being a jerk in the way you approach thematic questions or disagreements is in my opinion a super bannable offense. It won’t be the last time they make someone feel bad for disagreeing - and they will make your life harder. IME, these are the sorts of folks who drain a gamerunner’s energy until it’s dry.

@Faraday said in What Is Your Preferred Play Style?:

There is no one universal definition, but FWIW I use the technical definition of async, which merely means “not an immediate response”. So any situation where you have more than what your typical RPer would tolerate from “hey it’s your turn to pose”, IMHO, is async RP. Whether that scene is allowed to linger for a few hours or a few weeks is entirely up to the people involved and when they agree to call “cut”.

I know there’s not, but there’s also no ‘typical RPer’ time tolerated between poses anymore. You can’t define async by a standard that doesn’t exist, because people are assuming VASTLY different ‘typical time between poses’.

I’ve seen people turn open scenes into async scenes just by disappearing for a day and then coming back and going ‘sorry, got distracted’ without a word of discussion with their RP partner. More than once!

Async-primary isn’t my style of play, but I see its place and I’m happy it works for some people. But I’ve seen some real rudeness take place from people who assume that a scene can be taken async at any time by any person, and that makes me crazy. Async isn’t the problem here, obviously, the lack of communication is.

I think it’s probably increasingly important for games to clearly label what the ‘default assumption’ is for scene pacing, to define its terms, to state what general pace the game aims for, and to be clear about what sorts of scenes should require clarification with your RP partners.

I also see a lot more of this in RP requests - people asking for distracted or work slow, etc. specifically - so I think we’re getting there.

@Faraday

I think people use ‘async’ differently here and some definitions might be helpful.

To me, async is a scene that’s lasting 3+ days (usually more like a week) with hours or even days between poses.

Starting a scene and pausing it to pick up the next day, with the expectation that you’ll finish that same day, isn’t async.

RPing a scene over the course of a workday with 30 minutes between poses and the occasional hour+ long pause for lunch, meeting, commute, etc isn’t async.

I’d call those things ‘paused’ and ‘distracted’, respectively. I think a lot of people who don’t like async are fine with those sorts of slower-paced RP, and for me at least, Ares makes them possible because I can pick up and put down the scene with ease.

I want a scene to fit within my internal consistent timeline, which usually means ending within 24 hours of starting, with the occasional exception. I’m much less ‘synchronous’ in terms of a 3 hour dedicated stretch than I used to be - but I still don’t enjoy async scenes.

@Jumpscare There are days, maybe even weeks, when running a game is more stress than fun. Sometimes there’s a span of time when it feels like So Much, and sometimes even Too Much.

But mostly? It’s really great. The people are great, the stories are great, the folks who sign up to do work for free with me are great, the community is great, and it’s all super rewarding.

I’m glad your game running experience is being awesome!

@Jennkryst said in Prospective Star Wars:

The portal and scene async is like. Like… 90% of the reason I want to break Ares apart and figure out how to make it do the rest of what I want, yup.

Honestly, I think that if you’re really serious about this, you need to sit down and write out what you actually need to run this game. Figure out which features are ‘nice to have’ and which features are ‘must have’.

Write down how those features will work. Specifically think about the scene system, multi-sceneing, and async when you do this, because it affects a lot. Figure out whether your ‘must haves’ are compatible with this sort of RP.

I suspect that doing this will bring you to some choices between two desired things. Making those choices will make it easier to determine a next step.

@tsar

You are ALSO a delight to worldbuild with, and honestly, I’m mostly good at harnessing and organizing the raw creativity of other people. I am so happy to have met you and gotten to work with you on stories.

SOME SHOUTOUTS (I could probably do these all day)

@Third-Eye For being a consistent level head who’s not afraid to bring up the ways things might NOT work , as well as advocate for what is fun, and for a general and consistent commitment to clear communication. These are hugely important things both in game running and RP.

@Tez For always indulging in thinky thoughts about how to do admin things better and helping me become (I hope) the type of person who never thinks they’ve got it all figured out.

@YetiBeard For an endless supply of creativity and enthusiasm that keeps driving me when I’m worn out.

@deadscribe For REAL worldbuilding with do much detail I have trouble believing it all came out of your head. Specifically a real knack for evocative names and terms that I’m always jealous of.

@Arkandel

Absolutely not.

There are excellent staff who enjoy the work of building and yes, even administrating. ‘Doesn’t like doing the work’ actually sounds like something that disqualifies good staff.

I’m not saying you NEED a passion for answering requests and handling players, but you DO need to understand that it’s part of the job at be at worst ‘okay’ with it. It’s better if you find some degree of joy in keeping the ships running and the stories churning.

Wanting to be staff and wanting power for malicious reasons are not inherently the same thing.

Definitely both.

I mean, I agree that it’s not really ‘punishment’ since it’s voluntary, but if we’re asking whether it’s a privilege or a burden, it’s 100% both, and IMO it only works when the two are pretty balanced. You HAVE to have a good helping of joy - but you also need to really recognize your responsibilities and commitments.

It’s a privilege because I get to play on the game I want, in a theme I like, with stories I enjoy. I also get the privilege of playing on a game where I trust staff (cause it’s me!) and where people who are gross to me don’t stick around. I get to see people live in a world I built and do really cool things with it, and that’s very gratifying.

There are other benefits staff MAY get, but they’re murkier.

Do you get better plot, are people nicer to your PC, do you get cool stuff? I dunno, maybe sometimes, but if you’re a good staffer you also get worry about whether you’re getting too much plot, what people will think if you get a cool thing, whether enough other people have also gotten cool things, whether you are getting what you want in RP because people feel like they have to give it to you or are hoping to cozy up to admin.

I do think people sometimes discount this aspect of the ‘burden’ side of things, where the very act of being staff can sometimes rob you of the joy of the ‘privilege’ stuff people assume. Sometimes you don’t even GET the privileges people assume, and still get griping about it.

I won’t go into the burdens in detail - I think people probably know well enough that things like dealing with problem players, fixing broken code, trying to maintain your theme in the face of players with a different vision, trying to make everyone happy, and creating enough content can be wearing. Don’t even ask me when the last time I RPed in a plot I didn’t know all the spoilers to was.

A lot of these things, too, are a mixed bag in and of themselves. Writing a plot when I’m full of juice and creativity? Joy! Writing a plot when I’m worn out and work’s been A Lot but I need to get it done because I made a commitment and others are relying on me? Burden.

IDK. I generally find staffing MORE of a joy than a burden, but I think it’s taken a lot of years to find my balance, and it’s absolutely not a balance I can have without both a good staff team AND a good community of players who also treat me like a person and player and not just a story-and-code dispensary.

@Arkandel said in Bannings:

This kind of microaggression is definitely frustrating and it sucks to be its subject. However what about it is sanctionable? How much of it is reportable?

In other words what would a proper escalation to staff look like? And more specifically what is staff’s role here, as it seems there would be a line - somewhere - that separates administrating a game from having to micromanage personal peeves?

Staff has no role in micromanaging personal peeves.

They DO have a role in dealing with microagressions.

I agree with your first statement - this IS a microagression, and staff sure can handle it. I wouldn’t or ban someone over this. What I’d do is have a conversation with them about the behavior, without ascribing intent. This is happening, it needs to not happen. It doesn’t actually matter what they intend, and that way you can short circuit a lot of defensiveness. Just ‘great, I’m glad you’re not doing it on purpose. Now I just need you to be aware and not let it happen on accident, either.’

If they change their behavior, great. If they don’t, then I’d ban them for continuing to behave in a way that they were asked not to, because it was harmful. That, to me, says something clear about actual intent.

Biggest suggestion?
Before one makes a game, play lots of them.

Eh.

Not everyone wants to play lots of games, and it’s not a prereq for running a good one.

What IS a prereq, in my opinion, is to think carefully about what you’re doing and why, to consider the consequences, and to talk through them with someone who will serve as a real sounding board and not an echo chamber.

‘What you’re doing’ encompasses a lot of things, from the xp you give out to the PCs you focus on to the story you run. I’ve seen a lot of games open that seem to have spent a lot of time on some aspects, but not others. Sometimes these games seem to figure it out midflow - nothing’s written in stone, you can learn and course-correct as you go - and sometimes they don’t.

@Istus , you’re already doing a lot of listening and thinking. Just keep doing it, and maybe find folks who are interested in the same kind of game you want to run to really hash out the details with. You might end up with something cool.

Experience helps, but man. If you want to build a game now, with what you’ve got, go for it. If we didn’t do this, no one would ever build games.

Make mistakes. Try new things. Learn from them. Talk about what happened and why with players you trust. Course correct. Try again. Keep listening.

You will never, ever build a game without mistakes that you’ll fix ‘next time’. You just do the best you can, every time.

@mietze Finding a group of ‘yes, and’ folks who run with the ridiculous as readily as the serious is a fucking GIFT.

@shit-piss-love

Empty Night had this idea of a ‘social contract’ that spelled out what the game would and would not deal with, and what PCs could and could not be, that I really like. It gets at this idea in a really useful way, I think.

https://emptynight.aresmush.com/wiki/policy

I like especially how it outlines what we will engage with that will be a source of IC tension, what we may engage with, but PCs need to either accept that it’s cool, or be opposed, and what is strictly off the table.

@Tez said in Negative emotions and their role in RP:

There’s catharsis in the sadness, maybe, and not the rest. I’m not sure. I’m poking the thought.

This is the exact sentence I came here to write, but I promised myself I’d read the whole thread before I got there.

I’m trying to untangle why SADNESS over fictional things is cathartic in a way other negative emotions aren’t.

I do like other negative IC emotions - which generally I feel in real life as something more approaching glee - as long as they feel like they’re leading story to an interesting place and not an unfun one.

This is part of why I personally tend to prefer PvE. It’s a lot easier to have a knock down drag out and then slowly find your way back to a working relationship when you have that ‘vE’ to pull your characters back together. I tend to get a lot more anxious about ‘bad’ emotions when I don’t have a clear path forward in a relationship I enjoy. This doesn’t have to be ‘everything stays status quo’, but it’s nice if it’s at least ‘I can keep RPing with this person in a way that’s telling new stories’.

A friend linked this article about someone developing an app for roleplay - as an alternative to RP on places like Discord.

And yes, I enjoyed my stories on Twitter, Discord and Reddit as much as ever (Amino has never felt good to me) but I can never stop wondering Do we really need to settle for this?

None of these apps are made for role-playing, the community itself has made a set of rules and concepts so that each platform can be usable, we are using a platform that was not made for us
…
Some don’t even support markdown, but what is clear is that none of these platforms have special features made for roleplaying, and that’s fine, because none of them were made for that, we have adapted them… but, we need to stop.

We need an app.

I found it pretty fascinating, especially in light of the conversations we have about what’s left in the hobby, and about the barriers to running a game. It’s always been so striking to me that people want to RP so much that they’ll use platforms that are just AWFUL for it and figure out ways to tell stories.

I wonder how we can leverage this passion to grow our version of the hobby. I wonder if they’d be interested, or if the barrier to entry is still too high, or if they’d find the other toys we use distracting rather than additive. I wonder if there are other cultural barriers that we don’t even think about (how we think about story or write poses or talk about OOC and IC).

YES I am here for this.

I went delving into the depths of angelfire and the wayback machine for this log, as my personal copies have long since been lost to the depths of floppy disks.

Aerrin rolls her eyes as she turns away. “Well, I’m glad you’re so interested.”

That’s it. That’s the entire pose. My primary early RP sin was being super boring.

I don’t know for sure when this was, but I’d guess around 2000 or 2001.

I’m not sure this is the WEIRDEST, but it is the most recent: how hormones are synthesized for birth control (answer: pregnant mare urine or, if you want to get painful shots, apparently YAMS).

@KarmaBum said in New Concept:

The joke/idea being: The young vampire learning to transform into a bat is worried about where her clothes go, and Laszlo replies that she’s focused on the wrong thing, “When I want to transform into a bat, I simply shout BAT!”

I feel like this scene accurately describes two different types of players.

I’m the one who wants to know where the clothes go. Once I realized this both about myself and and people who simply shout BAT, a lot of things made more sense to me.

Watching players dive hard into not just exploring plot stuff, but also running stuff in order to tie into metaplot you’re real excited about is so fucking fun.