Posts made by YetiBeard

@tsar I was happy about this change. I thought it was a great idea.

@helvetica I realize I’m the outlier but spreadsheets play a weirdly big role in my pretendy fun time. I had some great spell / xp tracking sheets for Spirit Lake and then again when helping plan Shattered.

First, this probably doesn’t belong in Game Gab, because if you are going to come in and call a game a pile of burning trash that’s asking for a different type of conversation.

@MidnightSin said in Concordia Thread:

being informed that there’s some improvements to be made by the way staff talks to people and to those that are trying to give feedback jst dont, dont ask questions just smiel and nod and watch the burning continue.

I don’t know what’s with the weird mixed tenses and subjects here but are you implying someone told you to not ask questions, just smile and nod? Or are you suggesting that? That seems counterintuitive to this whole post where you ask a bunch of questions and make a bunch of insinuations.

In general it sounds like you are mad that someone promised you a game that you don’t feel like you got. I get that, but honestly if you want to suggest improvements this isn’t a great way to start. Proper capitalization however is a good way to start.

@Roz Coin helpfully pointed out where to find the spoiler tags upthread and someone else was called a hero later on.

It did make me chuckle.

If you managed this mess in three days (three days, three days, three days), I’m with staff on the ban. You sound like a nightmare.

You had a meltdown over what looked like a player possibly overstepping one time in a pose that required staff involvement. If that’s enough to send you into a spiral and require outside help to resolve, communal writing is going to be a tough place for you to thrive.

Also, please use paragraph breaks.

Someone else random piloting my retired PC is a horrifying thought. I can’t imagine taking a players character and turning it into a roster.

The thing about pre-setting up connections for me is that often looking at char sheets and thinking about a new char you have an idea of how a relationship or connection might work. I have very rarely had pre-made connections work out in RP the way I thought they would at app time unless I specifically knew the player and how we tend to RP together.

The number of times I’ve spent figuring out connections with strangers ahead of time only for them to have no bearing on anything RP-wise is very high.

To be clear, I’m pro-hooks for figuring out how two char might know or bump into one another, but full on connections have rarely panned out for me.

Also @Polk I do agree that WoD/Comics/Star Wars might have easier baked in connections, I think that the homebrew small town games have where I’ve found it easiest to forge on camera ones.

“I have a very good reputation” - Clearly someone trustworthy of good repute.

@KarmaBum for sure. I really love comps for this reason too, even more than a page. A comp sticks around and also provides a fun reminder of the scene it’s referencing. Often my comps are just X line made me cry, laugh, both, etc.

I rarely heart my own scenes unless it is specifically about someone else’s story if that makes sense?

I am a big proponent of likes, becuase I enjoy interacting with other people’s story even if I’m not actively involved. I think it’s fun to see what resonanted with people on my own scenes and in other people’s scenes. I just recently pushed for this to be included on a game that had decided to hide them because I do enjoy that type of interaction so much. A big part of what keeps me sticky on a game is caring not just about my character’s story but others’ storylines as well and often times the likes is an indicator that something important or fun happened in a scene and it’s worth reading vs skimming.

I do get that this causes people to get twitchy about comparing likes and can make people view it as a how much people like them, enjoy their rp, etc. Personally I do enjoy the popular scene posts to highlight things I might have missed, but I get why that’s not a positive for some.

@Pan

I’m not really sure it takes a lot as a player to prove you’re not a problem. I think that’s maybe a bit too broad a statement.

While I get the desire to show that you are a reasonable person and healthy member of the game, the bar for not being a problem is really just not being a problem.

I thought I wrote mine but apparently not.

CoMUX - Yeah it had some weird admin issues but this is where I met @blu and @Roadspike and a bunch of other great players. It was the first time being a part of larger plots in a meaningful way, even as a brand new player on the game. I didn’t app in knowing anyone but found plenty of people willing to open up and include me, even playing an obscure kind of whacky not-so-hero FC. (I like to think I did my part in redeeming Captain Boomerang Jr.)

Gray Harbor - I was there around the beginning and it was such an amazing journey.

Spirit Lake - Still too soon, still not over it.

@tsar first clearly you are not boring.

Second, it’s up to everyone in the scene to make it fun. Things are boring? LIGHT THE COFFEE SHOP ON FIRE (not your PC, you can blame the barista who just broke up with her boyfriend and has had it up to here with the manager insisting the croissants be evenly spaced in the display case when they clearly already are).

I think I am the chaotic opposite of KB in this regard where if things are boring I will go way in the opposite direction for my own amusement. Unless I find myself having to drag people along after multiple attempts, then I will probably bounce.

But my point is, you don’t blame your scene partner, the fault is not with them.

Unless it’s @KarmaBum then maybe.

So many of these would also apply to me:

• Meta commentary about my character lying or lovingly mocking them.
• So many broken sentences, em dashes, ellipses, a beat, etc. breaking up dialogue.
• A trainwreck with a heart of gold (or at least some goodness)
• @Pyrephox I also have been told I can be easily picked out by my PBs (maybe by the same person) which is mostly true

Very much not the point of the story but Red Sox kit (partner has no interest in hockey) made me laugh out loud partially because the Sox are baseball but mostly because it really drove home the point of how little partner cared about them.

@Third-Eye I felt a little invasive googling AA meetings in Grand Lake County. I don’t need uhm actually need this, but I’m glad it exsits for those that do? Sorry.

I know I’m on the same page with @Pyrephox in terms of wanting to play characters who do the wrong thing and make an ass of themselves and then try to write why they are still apart of the group. (also about the punching, always the punching)

I definitely don’t want to make other people OOCly angry, sad, jealous, whatever but I do really want those things ICly. I want messy relationships that are hard and make you examine if something is forgivable. I want to see characters make choices that aren’t clearly right but understandable. I love playing trainwrecks who sometimes get it together. However to me it’s always important to do it in a way that is pro my character (not mean spirited) and with a good sense of humor about it. I don’t ever want sad or difficult storylines to feel like an unrelenting buzzkill to read or take part in.

At the same time I know I’ve screwed up in terms of not checking in with RP partners often enough even when we’ve agreed to a certain storyline. I forget who mentioned that but it’s a really good point whenever treading into things that aren’t just good times or beating the baddie up.

Original theme was a barrier for me not that long ago. I’m a reformed Comic MU*er who was daunted by not knowing literal years of backstory about a theme before creating and writing a character.

Starting at Gray Harbor and then at Spirit Lake I think what really worked well for me was the following:

• Having a clear mission statement about what the game is and what kind of characters PC and NPC that inhabit the world with examples of things they might do IC. This seems obvious but I’ve read enough games where I couldn’t find this right off the bat and it left me kind of shrugging about what I would do there.
• Having a semi-standard introductory vignette to write to get attached to the character. In both cases it was Character comes to town and something weird happens. This isn’t for everyone like @Tat said but it definitely helped me feel grounded in my character and where they fit.
• Having events that are newbie friendly like the bug smashing on SL or on GH the plot was just getting going so everyone was kind of in the same stream of figuring things out IC. Somehow making it IC for the character to not know things so that there isn’t a lot of pressure to know already how your character acts in all situations. This is hard in games where you might have someone app in a grizzled veteran of whatever situation is happening but it makes it easier if some theme can conversationally come up in scenes naturally. No one wants information dumps, theme or otherwise but a reason to be unfamiliar I found extremely reassuring to me when writing so I didn’t have to remember a ton of things OOC just to pose.

As far as how to gamify a tutorial on a MUSH I think SL might have incentivized people to run newbie friendly event scenes? That feels like an in game tutorial that taught the basics of what combat might look like while introducing theme elements to new people. When I was a more seasoned char, running those scenes helped me get more confident in fs3 combat and the commands, so it was helpful both to the newbie and the person running them.

Prank wars on multiple places consisting of back and forth vignettes.

Crying laughing at things like possum attacks with @tat and then getting to play big emotinal payoff scenes months in the making.

Punching out feelings with characters bad at talking with @Pyrephox

Randomly having @Third-Eye and I decide their characters yell out the others name in greeting at every social event.

An NPC big-bad funeral scene run by @KarmaBum and @bear_necessities that absolutely rocked characters’ worlds.

Having found multiple groups of people at multiple places willing to “yes and…” ridiculous scenes into full blow mini-plots that often turned from goofy throw-aways into real character development.

I have stolen a lot of things over time. One of which is opening a scene with a [Before] and [Now] in the set, especially if it’s to get in an easy joke like [Before] Char: “I will never do that thing again” [Now] Char doing that exact thing.