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GlyphGryph posted:Counterpoint: "metaposing" (is that seriously the name of describing your internal state?) is actually super annoying, almost always horrible to read, tends to proliferate if left unchecked, and is actively actively painful to work with. Fun to write, sure, horrible to read. I can totally understand why someone would want to push for that sort rule. The second one is power posing. Metaposing is fine and can even be really good, so long as it isn't used to OOCly snipe at other characters. Unfortunately, it ends up just being used to show how dumb other PCs are, and how cool your PC is, and to get away with saying really rude poo poo to an Alpha/Prince/whatever without have to ever deal with the consequences. The funny thing is, if everyone playing MU*s calmed down, and didn't get mad that Joey Brujah is, internally, thinking that the Prince is an idiot then they'd be more fun. Like, that's a totally valid thing to think? It's ok that we see into the character's head and get insight into them. But people get so protective of their PCs that they go nuts at any suggestion that their PC isn't a perfect, dominant badass.
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Oct 28, 2016 16:19
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GlyphGryph posted:Counterpoint: "metaposing" (is that seriously the name of describing your internal state?) is actually super annoying, almost always horrible to read, tends to proliferate if left unchecked, and is actively actively painful to work with. Fun to write, sure, horrible to read. I can totally understand why someone would want to push for that sort rule. Hmmm, thats exactly what an external-school kung fu movie villain would say. They never understand and usually underestimate the soft art. Its all about physical force to people like you  But here's the real deal. In a fight, the fist that strikes you is not your enemy. Rather it is the heart and mind that guides the fist. Master not the fist but rather the heart and mind if you want ur gungfu to be truly strong. Seriously though its all about how it's done. You can still make physical action or speech into the impetus behind every pose while still using metaposing to add flavor. In fact its at least somewhat necessary to make a truly round character imo. Real human beings don't act in-line with their own character all the time, by way of example. We chicken out, avert our eyes, misunderstand over or undercompensate, trick and lie to ourselves, and all that other good if ridiculous garbage. To illustrate a character doing this, with just text and no metaposing, is pretty hard.
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Oct 29, 2016 02:13
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There's nothing wrong with metaposing when it is done in the service of entertainment. Unfortunately, a lot of people think that this means being a dick to other players. And, because of the current decline, the people who think that are either the only ones clinging to the flotsam of a MUSH or they're becoming an increasingly large percentage of the ones that are in a better state. Like a lot of things in MU*dom, it comes down to a horrible hard rule becoming a cultural norm because a few bad players were terrible with it. It's like how I've seen players experiment with a No Lying rule, where you can't lie to another player when asked an OOC question about a scene or plot. Sure, you can refuse to answer, but anyone who has read A Man For All Seasons should know how that turns out. I've seen a MUSH have a rule that space has oxygen in it so people can't 'abuse' it (but other inhospitable environments were not affected). It's like watching games try to deal with the declining number of players by trying to force things to work better, but it only kind of ruins the atmosphere that makes MUSHing a unique experience. Good MUSHing is like improv theatre, not tabletop roleplay. But it also feels like the hobby has gone through a huge number of changes over the past 2-3 years - cultural, social and even technological - some good, some bad, and some just from the playerbase declining. poo poo, over the past twelve months while I've had this thread open, I've probably been exposed to more drama and such than the past four or five combined.
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Oct 29, 2016 15:38
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Milky Moor posted:But it also feels like the hobby has gone through a huge number of changes over the past 2-3 years - cultural, social and even technological - some good, some bad, and some just from the playerbase declining. poo poo, over the past twelve months while I've had this thread open, I've probably been exposed to more drama and such than the past four or five combined. I think it has something to do with the evolution of third-party platforms for communication. There's now absolutely nothing to stop cliques from being able to shut themselves off to contact with others.
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Oct 29, 2016 20:20
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Nathilus posted:We chicken out, avert our eyes, misunderstand over or undercompensate, trick and lie to ourselves, and all that other good if ridiculous garbage. All of this can be illustrated perfectly clearly with text, though? And doesn't put the other person in the akward position of not knowing what they're supposed to know about you, or pretending they don't know things they now do. It's no different than acting out an improv scene in theatre or doing a tabletop RPG, neither of which are good situations to start describing what you're thinking and feeling (in general). Are you yourself arguing for eschewing the softer arts of hinting and subtlety in exchange for blasting everything out at max volume? Hell, I'm not even completely opposed to it, I just think it mostly serves as a crutch for poor writers to make their characters seem more special at the expense of others. I've seen it done well, to subtly prompt others and notify them of opportunities and openings, or to create some hilarious jokes, or where it is narratively appropriate because of some supernatural thing where people's internal states are in fact genuinely being broadcast... but usually it's just a tedious, boring, and hard to work with. quote:In fact its at least somewhat necessary to make a truly round character imo. Maybe I'm just really confused at this point, and we're not actually talking about broadcasting to other players things that are explicitly impossible to know for those players? Milky Moor posted:It's like how I've seen players experiment with a No Lying rule, where you can't lie to another player when asked an OOC question about a scene or plot. This seems like one of those rules that would work great in a situation where everyone is acting in good faith and not primarily trying to soothe their own ego, so I can see why that would end up not working so well in a normal MU* situation.
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Oct 29, 2016 23:24
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I only ever played at places where the rule was don't pose anything about a characters internal state that can't be expressed externally. That never seemed to be controversial, and these places were all very story-driven. Even if it's not strictly power posing ( his piercing gray eyes make you long for the comfort of your mother's bosom), it's unknowable information.
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Oct 29, 2016 23:38
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GlyphGryph posted:Maybe I'm just really confused at this point, and we're not actually talking about broadcasting to other players things that are explicitly impossible to know for those players? Even beyond the fact that several game systems include stats like Perception for a character that might cause them to be able to infer information about another character's mental state, there's one other important thing to keep in mind - There's a difference between things that would be impossible for a character to know and things that would be impossible for that character's player to know. That is to say, if your character walks up to my character wearing a shirt with a Muppet on it and my character has a phobia of Muppets, I can say something like "DCB, overwhelmed by his terror of Muppets, recoils from GlyphGryph." Now, your character might have no idea why my character is terrified of Muppets or even that such a fear exists, but you as a player could use your knowledge to inform this scene and later scenes ("hey, DCB might be hanging out trolling for easy +votes in the coffee shop again, I'll make sure my character is wearing his Muppet shirt again, that could be funny"). I mean, I can see an argument on both sides, both for and against metaposing (or thoughtposing, or whatever the hell you want to call it). But at least when I did it I always intended it as an exercise in giving more information to my fellow players so they could help me create more interesting scenes.
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Oct 29, 2016 23:38
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MC Smoke Sensei posted:I think it has something to do with the evolution of third-party platforms for communication. There's now absolutely nothing to stop cliques from being able to shut themselves off to contact with others. Probably. Feels like there's a lot more OOC communication these days and a lot more attempts to ferret out who the player is behind the character. Then you run into things like automated scene logs posted to wikis which allows people to engage in high school level drama by seeing who you've scened with and what you did. That's one of the weirder developments because, in my mind, logs were always a private thing.
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Oct 30, 2016 02:03
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Milky Moor posted:Probably. Feels like there's a lot more OOC communication these days and a lot more attempts to ferret out who the player is behind the character. That's kind of horrifying. But I suppose inevitable once "But look this person lied to me I have the logs" "Nuh uh I didn't say that at all look I have the logs" "Well poo poo clearly one of you altered the logs" drama happened. Which happened roughly one week into MU*ing as a thing.
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Oct 30, 2016 02:13
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DivineCoffeeBinge posted:That's kind of horrifying. But I suppose inevitable once "But look this person lied to me I have the logs" "Nuh uh I didn't say that at all look I have the logs" "Well poo poo clearly one of you altered the logs" drama happened. Which happened roughly one week into MU*ing as a thing. Like GlyphGryph pointed out, it'd work fine if everyone is acting in good faith - which used to be what I assumed - but there's enough people out there who aren't that it seems like an incredibly poorly thought out idea.
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Oct 30, 2016 02:22
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dupersaurus posted:I only ever played at places where the rule was don't pose anything about a characters internal state that can't be expressed externally. That never seemed to be controversial, and these places were all very story-driven. Even if it's not strictly power posing ( his piercing gray eyes make you long for the comfort of your mother's bosom), it's unknowable information. I ran into a dude who posed like that on a superhero game once. We were the only two people in the scene and I was playing Daredevil. Can't see your drat terrifying inhuman piercing eyes, pal.
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Oct 30, 2016 02:22
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There's a thought that's been running circles in my head while doing this thread and reading Ghogargi's LARP one. It applies to both groups, really, and it's probably been one that most people in either circle have encountered. 'When does the coping mechanism become a problem to be coped with?'
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Oct 30, 2016 04:41
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Milky Moor posted:'When does the coping mechanism become a problem to be coped with?'
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Oct 31, 2016 10:47
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CrazyTolradi posted:I'd say it's when the coping mechanism starts adversely impacting your ability to function and becomes the centre of your being; when it's no longer just something you do for fun. This. MU*s are important to me. The MOO I help run is, in a sense, my home on the internet and it's important to me. But the moment it starts adversely impacting my RL in terms of physical or mental health (or similar), it's a problem and I gotta pull back. It remains just a game and a project, not who I am.
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Oct 31, 2016 14:14
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It's really a rhetorical question, but it would be as CrazyTolradi described. If I was designing a MU* though I'd see about working it into the documentation somewhere.
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Oct 31, 2016 16:23
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Spacewolf posted:This. MU*s are important to me. The MOO I help run is, in a sense, my home on the internet and it's important to me. But the moment it starts adversely impacting my RL in terms of physical or mental health (or similar), it's a problem and I gotta pull back. It remains just a game and a project, not who I am. Seconded! On that note, I'm wondering just how hard it is to say "no" to people. I feel as though staff need more unambiguous ability to say no, and not have it challenged. Further, any misconduct or attempts to manipulate staff ought, in my opinion, to be met with an outright ban. How would a "we reserve the right to refuse service to anyone" policy work in practice?
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Nov 1, 2016 02:11
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MC Smoke Sensei posted:Seconded! On that note, I'm wondering just how hard it is to say "no" to people. I feel as though staff need more unambiguous ability to say no, and not have it challenged. Further, any misconduct or attempts to manipulate staff ought, in my opinion, to be met with an outright ban. How would a "we reserve the right to refuse service to anyone" policy work in practice? In theory, it's a good idea. In practice, when you have a playerbase of - let's say - 50 people and banning one player will cause his nine friends to leave with him in a huff, it becomes a much more momentous decision.
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Nov 1, 2016 02:13
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It's also a big problem when you draw your staff from the playerbase, because no matter how unbiased a person believes they are, there will always be some level of preference for parties, either conscious or subconscious.
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Nov 1, 2016 03:26
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MC Smoke Sensei posted:Seconded! On that note, I'm wondering just how hard it is to say "no" to people. I feel as though staff need more unambiguous ability to say no, and not have it challenged. Further, any misconduct or attempts to manipulate staff ought, in my opinion, to be met with an outright ban. How would a "we reserve the right to refuse service to anyone" policy work in practice? DivineCoffeeBinge posted:In theory, it's a good idea. Bingo. It's something I raised with staff of a MU* I used to frequent and that was the exact reason they gave for not clamping down on things. Playerbases are just too small these days to do things like that. It's one of those things where, though, you had to say 'no' to them before they ingratiated themselves and set down roots. If you get them early, they won't have the ability to take their friends with them. Chemotherapy doesn't work when the tumor has metastasized. HellMOO might have been weird as gently caress content-wise, but I think it's one of the best run places I've ever encountered just because the admins made it clear that they'd kick you out if you broke the rules and there might not be any warnings.
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Nov 1, 2016 03:44
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