I love the game lines that I usually play, the topic/world, and being able to create (write). For games like WoD or Fate-like games, I love the tabletop aspect of interacting with that side of things and being able to RP out things based on that. It makes it all feel more fun than regular tabletop. When things happen in-game, we can talk about it in RP, plot next steps, and work through how it impacts characters and the world. It’s always a lot of fun finding players and staff who are really in for the story building and open to ideas. So much fun being creative in that way.

I dislike it when games lose that side of things. The part where we’re “doing things”. Changing the game world, interacting with storylines, leveraging rules systems, and playing the game.

I’ve played games where we’ll spend RL days working through some plot, and it doesn’t feel like it has an impact on the game in any way, shape, or form, and that kind of leads to a feeling I dislike too. I’m not a fan of async either. It’s too hard to keep interested.

I like when games push a lot of the ooc discussions to Discord or channels I can gag. I know we’re all people and we’re a community, but sometimes I don’t wanna hear about someone’s bad day or feelings on whatever spamming through channels I monitor for things related to the game.

@InkyTheGhost said in Numetal/Retromux:

I’d hate to bring things back around to the negative, so I’m going to avoid any kind of personal attack in this post as best I can. I think this forum has done a pretty good job pulling apart Joe/Vincent’s arguments already, save one. And I think it is one that needs to be responded to.

Blossom’s player is not the creepy stalker. She is kind, extremely loyal, unafraid to speak her mind, and one of the best writers I’ve RP’d with in decades of playing on MU*s. She will always stand up for her friends, and that includes the times beyond counting in which she stood up to me on behalf of Joe/Vincent. I wish he had better earned such loyalty, or prized it more highly.

I’ve had, lets call it center court (rather than front row) seats for most of the events that Vincent has described in his unwarranted attack on a player that had nothing to do with his situation turning to shit on Retro. His version of them bares very little resemblance to the truth as I perceived it at the time, nor as I recollect it now. I strongly suspect that the version of events posted here is similar to most of his diatribes against his perceived enemies on Retro: A small kernel of truth, cherry picked from hours, days, months, or years of conversations; which he feels he can use to make someone look bad. In almost every example though, if you look at the actual “receipts” without the context Vincent/Joe provides, what you see is just someone trying to be nice to the guy.
Can Joe/Vincent provide more of these out of context statements? Probably. We all say things to our friends in private DMs that might make us look bad if taken entirely out of context.

Finally, I would like to echo previous sentiment that if there -are- staff orgies on Retro, I’m very sad I have never been invited to them. If there were orgies amongst the Giovanni, big time same. (Though I suspect both were just figments of someone’s imagination.)

I’m Inky, I staff Changeling and Wraith on Retro. Anyone who would like to play either is welcome to app in. I can’t promise you orgies, but I can promise I won’t hate on your concept out of hand, whether it is a special snowflake or Johnny Card Board Cut Out.

Regarding the cherry-picking aspect, in general, I’ve found that in real life and on forums like this, everyone is an unreliable narrator when it comes to telling their own story, and everyone tends to be the hero of their own story.

For the game itself, my own experience has varied. You are forced to deal with a player/character like Eddie in every sphere in some kind of role that means you have to deal with the baggage they bring, for good or bad. Like most games, there is a core group of characters/players that sucks all the oxygen out of the room for other players/take up all the time staff has/do everything without thought for other players. All the usual tropes we’re used to in these games as discussed here, good things and bad things.

There is a lot more information I think is needed to really assist, mostly because depending on what software and services you’re already using, there may already be several ways this can be done. Without knowing more, here is some random info that may help point you in the right direction:

Email Parsing Services:
Mailgun (Inbound Routes) - parses incoming emails, extracts data, sends to webhooks
SendGrid (Inbound Parse) - similar functionality
Postmark (Inbound Processing) - clean interface for email-to-webhook
Amazon SES (with Lambda) - AWS solution for email processing

Workflow Automation Platforms:
Zapier - can trigger on new emails, parse content, update records
Microsoft Power Automate - especially if you’re using Office 365/Outlook
Make (formerly Integromat) - more complex automation workflows
n8n - open-source workflow automation

CRM/Database Integrations:
HubSpot - has built-in email-to-record functionality
Salesforce - Email-to-Case feature does exactly this <–
Airtable - can receive emails and parse them into records
Notion - has email-to-database capabilities

DIY Solutions:
Google Apps Script - if using Gmail/Google Workspace
Microsoft Graph API - for Office 365 environments
IMAP + Python/Node.js scripts on a server