Spleen Venting
Normally, if I need to "vent my spleen" I'll share my ranting with a friend online. Also normally, I'll end up paying for it because some part(s) of what I'm complaining about will involve them, they'll take it personally, and I'll end up spending an evening or more trying to make them feel better after incidentally tearing them down. It's an exercise in futility, really, and I end up feeling too tired to give a rat's ass more than "better." And right now, a LOT of what's bothering me involves online friends.
I serve as equipment wizard on FurryFaire - the staff member who oversee rolls involved in characters making/buying things or getting their starting allowance of items. In a perfect world (or a fully-coded MUD) this wouldn't even be necessary, but the way things are set up, items on a sheet have to be manually put there by a W-bitted staff member. Because of space limitations, details of such items often have to go somewhere else on the character. I've started doing that myself too, even though regular players can access it, just because I'm tired of having to explain how that works to people who don't already know or waiting for people to make entries they were told to.
Some days, this isn't so bad. Other days, everyone wants to make a roll and requires oversight. About half of the requests I receive as "quick" affairs taking five minutes or so (due to time between my poses and theirs). That's not so bad. The rest, however, don't have any idea what they are rolling, or come up with a dozen questions about it, or start going into tons of detail that doesn't matter, or want to do something outside the rules, or are just plain frickin' slow. I can spend twenty minutes to an hour with someone trying to explain things just because I'm trying very hard not to be rude and say "Roll Social+Business and shut up." I've dealt with pages and mails over multiple days of people going on, and on, and on about the bloody life story of their "free" starting hirelings (which I'm starting to think was a horrible idea) when I don't need the information nor do I care - and frequently when I have to deal with that, the character is way above "starting" point totals anyway.
I have asked people to get their acts together beforehand to save time. Few do.
In the last major system revision, we had a serious problem with power creep. I argued the two main problems were a lack of limits and the frequency with which character points are handed out.
Well, I suppose I should be grateful. Now there are some better limitations on high-end power. But the points are still given out like candy. I had a character off involved in a plot for around two weeks. She learned a couple things, but her impact on the events was negligible. I don't think anything would have played out differently if she wasn't there and I literally spent several nights in a row trying to figure out how to say "stays quiet and keeps her head down" in different ways. This, to me, is not worthy of much, if any, recognition. But at roughly 2 points a day minimum plus bonuses for writing a couple board postings that were mainly to make myself feel remotely involved, she walked away with over 60 points. A new character starts at 100.
To me, that's ridiculous. To our head wizard, that's fine. To him, that was all an adventure and characters should be able to show notable improvement after such. He thinks of it in terms of a tabletop RPG. I find that method of thinking to be flawed because the MUCK is not a tabletop RPG. In such a game, the GM can tailor things to the group at, essentially, any level of power. The MUCK, however, is a persistent world where the majority of beings to interact with are 0-point NPC mooks. The world does not scale with the PCs, thus letting the PCs advance so fast and with few limits causes problems. If every PC, after a year of play, can bench press horses without blinking and be better at every skill than your average NPC specialist (which is remarkably easy), logic starts to break down. Nevermind that if you want to threaten them, you have to bring out something that would level cities of normal folk.
Alynna pisses me off. Seriously, it annoys me when she goes idle for weeks or months at a time, but it usually takes only one line from her to actually anger me. The sense of selfishness is astonishing. Whatever others might be discussing, she'll break in with something about herself - even if it doesn't relate. I've seen her bitch about her life, or go on about her plans, but I don't think I've EVER seen her talk about something or someone else. She carries an air about her as though she DESERVES special consideration and, to my greater annoyance, people actually pander to this.
After months of inactivity, she complains about someone else taking over the position of ambassador one of her characters held. She bitches that this person only got there because they were favored by the head wiz - nevermind her own lack of doing anything. She complains about never getting anything special herself and starts talking about how to kill off the new ambassador character in-game. So what happens? Someone steps up and gives her character a new posting. Sure, this shuts her up about that one this one incident, but it only encourages her for the next time. And there will be a next time. She complained about one character not being elected mayor. She complained about not being able to have one of her characters marry someone who was already engaged (and talked about how to kill the fiance to get her way).
Okay, I grant she's done things for the MUCK. I would never take the time to learn how to do the coding she's done. Great. But as far as I'm concerned, this does not entitle her to being a self-righteous ass with an overdeveloped sense of entitlement.
Then there's the annoyances centered around a particular character - essentially the wife of one of mine. When she had her fun dalliances with an imp she kept, spiffy. When he tried to get her pregnant with demon spawn, she went along with it - fine, I made sure to leave that as her choice. I played the imp too for her entertainment. Whee.
Down the line, she goes to get her children blessed by her goddess. This is a minor irritation to me simply because it shows her being completely uncaring about the "presumed" father's feelings. He follows a different religion, so one would think she might at least talk to him first. She doesn't.
What really pisses me off out of character is her goddess makes these children the husband's in spite of them not being his to begin with. Did anyone ask me? No. Does a goddess of magic even have that right? Questionable in my mind. While this is trivial by a lot of standards, the inconsiderate lack of communication is a burning splinter in the back of my mind. Now where I come from, something that's going to affect another person's character for a long time to come (such as becoming a father) is discussed with that player beforehand, at least briefly. That this didn't happen makes me feel somewhat betrayed on one level and furious with said goddess' player (now that I've been told it was her that made this decision) on another.
And what the hell is with the female characters of the MUCK gender-shifting to screw one another? They may or may not even have the powers/magic necessary to do so. Can't anyone be happy with one damn gender these days?
For that matter, somehow "rape" is utterly and totally against the rules of the MUCK. Can't even include it in backstory or refer to it out-of-scene, it's so taboo that it is just considered to not exist in the setting. Period.
Oh, except that it happens anyway. Early on, I had someone flash supernatural powers at a character of mine just to take them home for some fun. That caused no small measure of fury from the character later, but was somehow ignored as a violation of the AUP. The head wiz seems to be of the mind that somehow forced/coerced-willingness isn't rape.
Excuse me what?
That's not a distinction there. Either have the rule and enforce it globally, or dump it.
The rules keep F-ing changing.
I understand that the FurryFaire rules system is going into place off-the-drawing board. I know there are holes. I don't mind them being patched.
What truly ticks me off is that our designer starts with patching a hole, then runs hog-wild with editing things across the board whether they have proven to need it or not. And these new drafts are always pitched as "better." Sometimes they are, but they open up new holes, rendering the earlier fixes pointless and opening the way for an entirely new draft of things.
Craft rules for example. With the last major revision, crafting was pared down to one roll. This was pitched as a good thing - nice and easy. Then a while back, for reasons that elude me, he suddenly decides to change things around: oh, for time you use this skill, but for cost you use a different one. This doesn't really improve things, it makes it harder for me to keep track and do my job, and it means any crafting characters now have to focus on two skills to do what they used to with one. Why?
On top of that, he just introduced rules for buying materials prior to crafting. This means you can do things just how you did back in the LAST major rules set. Wait, isn't that a step backwards? And this comes mostly from his allowing someone to buy materials in spite of a lack of rules. Gee, now it has to be allowable.
So there are new rules for me to learn and there's more complication to the system that, in my mind, doesn't actually offer any benefit. And I'm told the new changes to magic I've seen are just proposals yet, but that won't last. They'll be official in a few weeks probably. More changes for everyone to try keeping up with.
And straight off of that point, I've been getting a lot of this lately. A rules question comes up, and I ask the head wiz. He gives me an answer... that is completely at odds with something previously stated. So I have to spend time explaining to him why this doesn't work with what's established (often a painful process in itself), and usually he ends up rewriting things to mesh both together anyway.
What the hell? Can't we have rules that people follow instead of just changing them anytime there's a new thought?
Then there's the power-gaming and meta-gaming I see all around. They often (though not always) go hand-in-hand as people do whatever they can to get another die to roll. It sickens me, and I've discussed it before. Part of what gets me about it is I feel driven to try to keep up, then I feel disgusted with myself for doing so. My best defense so far is to try blocking it out, but that only works so well.
As it stands, I even think about logging on to FurryFaire and my morale plummets. Every word from Alynna, every alteration to the rules I already can't keep up with, every person saying "I want this" because it gives better bonuses... every single incident kills a part of the me that cares about the place. I've invested much time in the place, and it's my main/only link to some friends, but through the weekend it's done nothing but piss me off. I do not enjoy dealing with this, especially when I'm not even inspired enough to actually play anything. I introduced a new/old character with thoughts of how they might deal with politics of the Shire, and I haven't been able to get myself to push her into politics of the Shire. I log on and instead of being eager to get involved, I feel like burying my head in the sand to keep from feeling ill.
What's worse, I've been told that most of what has been done with the MUCK has been, in some way, for me. If that's true, then why does so much of it run counter to my own desires? I don't really want it to be for me, in part because I don't want to believe someone could mistake my wants so severely - but more because I feel a MUCK should be a shared world for the players, not for one player.
And through it all, if I complain... well, I put that disclaimer at the beginning - the head wizard gets disheartened and I actually have to frickin' console him because... I don't even know why. I'm an empathic friend? I feel bad for making him feel bad? Ugh.
I serve as equipment wizard on FurryFaire - the staff member who oversee rolls involved in characters making/buying things or getting their starting allowance of items. In a perfect world (or a fully-coded MUD) this wouldn't even be necessary, but the way things are set up, items on a sheet have to be manually put there by a W-bitted staff member. Because of space limitations, details of such items often have to go somewhere else on the character. I've started doing that myself too, even though regular players can access it, just because I'm tired of having to explain how that works to people who don't already know or waiting for people to make entries they were told to.
Some days, this isn't so bad. Other days, everyone wants to make a roll and requires oversight. About half of the requests I receive as "quick" affairs taking five minutes or so (due to time between my poses and theirs). That's not so bad. The rest, however, don't have any idea what they are rolling, or come up with a dozen questions about it, or start going into tons of detail that doesn't matter, or want to do something outside the rules, or are just plain frickin' slow. I can spend twenty minutes to an hour with someone trying to explain things just because I'm trying very hard not to be rude and say "Roll Social+Business and shut up." I've dealt with pages and mails over multiple days of people going on, and on, and on about the bloody life story of their "free" starting hirelings (which I'm starting to think was a horrible idea) when I don't need the information nor do I care - and frequently when I have to deal with that, the character is way above "starting" point totals anyway.
I have asked people to get their acts together beforehand to save time. Few do.
In the last major system revision, we had a serious problem with power creep. I argued the two main problems were a lack of limits and the frequency with which character points are handed out.
Well, I suppose I should be grateful. Now there are some better limitations on high-end power. But the points are still given out like candy. I had a character off involved in a plot for around two weeks. She learned a couple things, but her impact on the events was negligible. I don't think anything would have played out differently if she wasn't there and I literally spent several nights in a row trying to figure out how to say "stays quiet and keeps her head down" in different ways. This, to me, is not worthy of much, if any, recognition. But at roughly 2 points a day minimum plus bonuses for writing a couple board postings that were mainly to make myself feel remotely involved, she walked away with over 60 points. A new character starts at 100.
To me, that's ridiculous. To our head wizard, that's fine. To him, that was all an adventure and characters should be able to show notable improvement after such. He thinks of it in terms of a tabletop RPG. I find that method of thinking to be flawed because the MUCK is not a tabletop RPG. In such a game, the GM can tailor things to the group at, essentially, any level of power. The MUCK, however, is a persistent world where the majority of beings to interact with are 0-point NPC mooks. The world does not scale with the PCs, thus letting the PCs advance so fast and with few limits causes problems. If every PC, after a year of play, can bench press horses without blinking and be better at every skill than your average NPC specialist (which is remarkably easy), logic starts to break down. Nevermind that if you want to threaten them, you have to bring out something that would level cities of normal folk.
Alynna pisses me off. Seriously, it annoys me when she goes idle for weeks or months at a time, but it usually takes only one line from her to actually anger me. The sense of selfishness is astonishing. Whatever others might be discussing, she'll break in with something about herself - even if it doesn't relate. I've seen her bitch about her life, or go on about her plans, but I don't think I've EVER seen her talk about something or someone else. She carries an air about her as though she DESERVES special consideration and, to my greater annoyance, people actually pander to this.
After months of inactivity, she complains about someone else taking over the position of ambassador one of her characters held. She bitches that this person only got there because they were favored by the head wiz - nevermind her own lack of doing anything. She complains about never getting anything special herself and starts talking about how to kill off the new ambassador character in-game. So what happens? Someone steps up and gives her character a new posting. Sure, this shuts her up about that one this one incident, but it only encourages her for the next time. And there will be a next time. She complained about one character not being elected mayor. She complained about not being able to have one of her characters marry someone who was already engaged (and talked about how to kill the fiance to get her way).
Okay, I grant she's done things for the MUCK. I would never take the time to learn how to do the coding she's done. Great. But as far as I'm concerned, this does not entitle her to being a self-righteous ass with an overdeveloped sense of entitlement.
Then there's the annoyances centered around a particular character - essentially the wife of one of mine. When she had her fun dalliances with an imp she kept, spiffy. When he tried to get her pregnant with demon spawn, she went along with it - fine, I made sure to leave that as her choice. I played the imp too for her entertainment. Whee.
Down the line, she goes to get her children blessed by her goddess. This is a minor irritation to me simply because it shows her being completely uncaring about the "presumed" father's feelings. He follows a different religion, so one would think she might at least talk to him first. She doesn't.
What really pisses me off out of character is her goddess makes these children the husband's in spite of them not being his to begin with. Did anyone ask me? No. Does a goddess of magic even have that right? Questionable in my mind. While this is trivial by a lot of standards, the inconsiderate lack of communication is a burning splinter in the back of my mind. Now where I come from, something that's going to affect another person's character for a long time to come (such as becoming a father) is discussed with that player beforehand, at least briefly. That this didn't happen makes me feel somewhat betrayed on one level and furious with said goddess' player (now that I've been told it was her that made this decision) on another.
And what the hell is with the female characters of the MUCK gender-shifting to screw one another? They may or may not even have the powers/magic necessary to do so. Can't anyone be happy with one damn gender these days?
For that matter, somehow "rape" is utterly and totally against the rules of the MUCK. Can't even include it in backstory or refer to it out-of-scene, it's so taboo that it is just considered to not exist in the setting. Period.
Oh, except that it happens anyway. Early on, I had someone flash supernatural powers at a character of mine just to take them home for some fun. That caused no small measure of fury from the character later, but was somehow ignored as a violation of the AUP. The head wiz seems to be of the mind that somehow forced/coerced-willingness isn't rape.
Excuse me what?
That's not a distinction there. Either have the rule and enforce it globally, or dump it.
The rules keep F-ing changing.
I understand that the FurryFaire rules system is going into place off-the-drawing board. I know there are holes. I don't mind them being patched.
What truly ticks me off is that our designer starts with patching a hole, then runs hog-wild with editing things across the board whether they have proven to need it or not. And these new drafts are always pitched as "better." Sometimes they are, but they open up new holes, rendering the earlier fixes pointless and opening the way for an entirely new draft of things.
Craft rules for example. With the last major revision, crafting was pared down to one roll. This was pitched as a good thing - nice and easy. Then a while back, for reasons that elude me, he suddenly decides to change things around: oh, for time you use this skill, but for cost you use a different one. This doesn't really improve things, it makes it harder for me to keep track and do my job, and it means any crafting characters now have to focus on two skills to do what they used to with one. Why?
On top of that, he just introduced rules for buying materials prior to crafting. This means you can do things just how you did back in the LAST major rules set. Wait, isn't that a step backwards? And this comes mostly from his allowing someone to buy materials in spite of a lack of rules. Gee, now it has to be allowable.
So there are new rules for me to learn and there's more complication to the system that, in my mind, doesn't actually offer any benefit. And I'm told the new changes to magic I've seen are just proposals yet, but that won't last. They'll be official in a few weeks probably. More changes for everyone to try keeping up with.
And straight off of that point, I've been getting a lot of this lately. A rules question comes up, and I ask the head wiz. He gives me an answer... that is completely at odds with something previously stated. So I have to spend time explaining to him why this doesn't work with what's established (often a painful process in itself), and usually he ends up rewriting things to mesh both together anyway.
What the hell? Can't we have rules that people follow instead of just changing them anytime there's a new thought?
Then there's the power-gaming and meta-gaming I see all around. They often (though not always) go hand-in-hand as people do whatever they can to get another die to roll. It sickens me, and I've discussed it before. Part of what gets me about it is I feel driven to try to keep up, then I feel disgusted with myself for doing so. My best defense so far is to try blocking it out, but that only works so well.
As it stands, I even think about logging on to FurryFaire and my morale plummets. Every word from Alynna, every alteration to the rules I already can't keep up with, every person saying "I want this" because it gives better bonuses... every single incident kills a part of the me that cares about the place. I've invested much time in the place, and it's my main/only link to some friends, but through the weekend it's done nothing but piss me off. I do not enjoy dealing with this, especially when I'm not even inspired enough to actually play anything. I introduced a new/old character with thoughts of how they might deal with politics of the Shire, and I haven't been able to get myself to push her into politics of the Shire. I log on and instead of being eager to get involved, I feel like burying my head in the sand to keep from feeling ill.
What's worse, I've been told that most of what has been done with the MUCK has been, in some way, for me. If that's true, then why does so much of it run counter to my own desires? I don't really want it to be for me, in part because I don't want to believe someone could mistake my wants so severely - but more because I feel a MUCK should be a shared world for the players, not for one player.
And through it all, if I complain... well, I put that disclaimer at the beginning - the head wizard gets disheartened and I actually have to frickin' console him because... I don't even know why. I'm an empathic friend? I feel bad for making him feel bad? Ugh.
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