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Messages - Kaerli_Stronwylle

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1
Complaint Department / Re: Incommunicado players
« on: October 10, 2015, 11:53:08 am »
Kaerli, if your question is something along the lines of, "why can't I relate to people?" Or "what is my relationship to society/the world/the rest of existence/God?" Then I'm afraid you won't find the answer on an internet gaming forum. My sincere advice is to find a trained, professional counselor to help you explore these questions. My recommendation is someone who works with Jungian depth analysis, archetypal theory, gestalt theory, existential theory, rogerian theory, or transpersonal  theory (my personal favorite). Or at least find someone you are comfortable with and who has your welfare in mind.

I'm being very sincere here, this is what I'm in grad school for. I'm in no way being snarky, or calling you crazy, or telling you that you need help. But I can see that you ARE asking for help, and the kind of help you are asking for can only be found in the living, breathing presence of another person, not on the Internet. All blessings to you.
Rest assured that I'm working with a professional on these matters.

@Sarras: I know :P

@Cairn from the quote -- when I try to bring up that this stuff bothers me, I basically get nothing useful in reply, just argument fodder

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Complaint Department / Re: Incommunicado players
« on: October 04, 2015, 04:06:48 pm »
Bringing things around to the matter of assumptions, I quote Aramara from a different thread:

quote author=Aramara Meibi link=topic=42276.msg478049#msg478049 date=1442450438]
Hey, my sun is in Aquarius, 'go with the flow' is written in my stars. The 'flow' in the special case of RP is the narrative. Creating conflict, drama, tension, challenges, dire consequences, all these drive the narrative. So it's a matter of feeling out the direction the story wants to go and going there intuitively. So if it makes more narrative sense for my character to lose a battle or suffer from heartbreak, then it becomes ok, even enjoyable for me to allow that to happen, instead of forcing a happy ending where it doesn't naturally belong.

Some submissiveness is vital to the health of society, but everything in balance, know when to assert yourself and know when to act passively. Any character trait taken to its extreme is unhealthy and unregulated. I imagine the kind of person who wears a different face depending on the crowd they're in, 'catering to everyone', is missing a fundamental authentic self-image. Know what you stand for and stand for it.

But that's RL, and likewise derailing the thread. this is a game and a gaming community, so there has to be give and take for everyone to enjoy the game. My point is that by taking your ego out of the experience and making your decisions based on something larger and more abstract, such as 'the community' or 'the narrative' could allow you the player to let your character to suffer the consequences and still enjoy the game.
[/quote]

Am I correct in that this community assumes players can intuit/feel out how a narrative should go?  I ask because I've always been someone who's had a logical/visual intuition, instead of a social one -- is there no room in PS for players that lack social/story intuition?

(And P.S. one of the great senses I've had is that PS is representative of most online RP communities -- and that means that the kinds of problems I have here will just recur over and over if I just go community-seeking)

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Complaint Department / Re: Incommunicado players
« on: September 28, 2015, 07:18:20 pm »

Second -- my natural approach to the world undermines many of the assumptions that form the basis of the RP community around here -- assumptions about what RP is about, how the world should behave, what characters should know about the world they are in, and even how characters should live out their day-to-day lives.

Finally -- my natural approach to the world leads to a RP style that when left unchecked, is pretty inherently offensive to most RPers here, but in a way that isn't obvious enough at first glance to draw complaints; I'm basically one walking player agency problem in a setup like this, which is quite an insidious thing to be.


Imagine for a moment that I joined a baseball team and upon receiving much grief from fellow players, I argued to no avail, that my way of playing baseball (which involves shooting poisoned darts and hiding the bases behind my back) was based on my "different mind", "unique lifestyle" and "keen ability to think outside of the box".  If they didn't buy it and asked me to change or leave, do you think that it might behoove me to learn how "others" play ball, and start playing it the way they play it?
I've tried asking how you folks play ball over and over -- and time and time again, folks try to explain RP from the same assumption-base they expect PS players to hold, without stating those assumptions, or recasting their explanation when I indicate I'm not understanding it.

Also: when I do swing away from the conflict-metagame complex, I get penalized for doing so in the form of a lack of support for my efforts.  I have a character who wants to build a bridge over the Irifon, for instance; however, I get the sense that such a RP would receive nil support from the community, if not opposition, hence I basically dare not try at the moment.

Furthermore, I have a challenge for you -- explain to me how a long-term, real-world conflict develops and functions without developing an associated conflict-metagame.

4
Complaint Department / Re: Incommunicado players
« on: September 27, 2015, 06:36:49 pm »
Or I simply enjoyed the game without worrying about who's toes I stepped on, if any.
(I've had gazillions of RP threads that have offended some people to some degree or another.)

Here's the catch:

Much like in real life - If YOU fail to tell anyone that what they are doing is bothering you, you will have found no solution.
In PS if you fail to do so, that is also your prerogative. Let's not wait for others to fix our problems for us.

Why is this? Because people are infinitely different in the smallest ways, or largest. If you spend your whole life worrying about being perfect or pleasing others, you have lost a good portion of who you are instead. Embrace creativity and ideas, and if you find offense, seek to make it right, no?

Those who complain are contented to sit back and watch life pass them by. Those who seek to find a change, however small it is, are the real doers of the world.

 If a character is created, plays within PlaneShift's settings, and abides by PlaneShift's 'PG' ruling? There's no reason to go OOC at all. You can live a perfectly happy IC life. And if you offend anyone, then it's their problem - you're following Talad's rules to par!

;D

First off -- most people can intuit when they are starting to offend someone and back off then -- I don't have that intuition nearly as much. 

Second -- my natural approach to the world undermines many of the assumptions that form the basis of the RP community around here -- assumptions about what RP is about, how the world should behave, what characters should know about the world they are in, and even how characters should live out their day-to-day lives.

Finally -- my natural approach to the world leads to a RP style that when left unchecked, is pretty inherently offensive to most RPers here, but in a way that isn't obvious enough at first glance to draw complaints; I'm basically one walking player agency problem in a setup like this, which is quite an insidious thing to be.

5
Complaint Department / Re: Incommunicado players
« on: September 14, 2015, 10:27:06 pm »
I'd like to raise a point in counter to those who are saying that RP should only require IC communication -- how are we, as a community, supposed to build the inter-player trust relationships needed for RP if we don't communicate with each other as players?

6
Complaint Department / Re: Incommunicado players
« on: August 29, 2015, 06:15:24 pm »
Kaerli, the problem is that you have to pinpoint every single outcome and dissect every other scenario we come up with. So that's why people refuse to discuss some things with you OOCly. Sorry to be harsh but it's the only way you'll understand this.

Quit forcing RPs, and let it flow. Roleplaying is like a fart: if you push it, it's probably a [REDACTED].
I'd like to do that, but what should I do when players refuse to RP with my characters, because their past biases overpower any chance of current experience overcoming them?  Is the anon-alt approach my only hope?

7
Complaint Department / Re: Incommunicado players
« on: August 29, 2015, 03:41:13 pm »
One other thing to consider is that if 100 players are online and 6 don't reply to you, it seems like RP is thriving and you have tonnes of people to interact with.

But when 12 players are online...
Aye -- this is a much larger problem because of the small size of our community; I don't have the ability to "pick and choose" what subcommunities to interact with any longer.

8
Complaint Department / Re: Incommunicado players
« on: August 28, 2015, 09:41:56 pm »
One trend I've noticed lately is that more and more players don't want to have much, if anything, to do with Out of Character communication, especially ingame.  This makes it very hard to do everything from trying to set up and plan RPs (since we simply don't have the encounter density needed for randomly running into people to suffice for keeping plots from stalling out) to simply finding out what people want out of their RP, or even simply building relationships at an inter-player level.

Why is this?  Is this just me, or is this something we need to sit down and have a discussion as a community about?

Yes, it is just you, for the most part. Most newcommers learn to stick to IC info and just play the damn game after a week or so. You? You've been obsessing over this kind of stuff for years now and I'm sure you have a rationalization or excuse for it. If you don't like role playing with IC info only or feel that you cannot role play with IC information only, then you are probably not really interested in role playing.

Surpise, surprise....

Roleplaying is like a fart: if you push it, it's probably a [REDACTED].

Yes, there is much truth in this statement.

Here's the thing -- people don't respond well to my characters' ways of trying to get information ICly either; asking directly runs straight into the complex web of social secret-keeping that characterises PS RP, espionage has ranged from almost fruitless to downright counterproductive for me, and physical evidence is disdained by the other RPers in this community (I have no clue why, either).

9
Complaint Department / Incommunicado players
« on: August 15, 2015, 07:31:04 pm »
One trend I've noticed lately is that more and more players don't want to have much, if anything, to do with Out of Character communication, especially ingame.  This makes it very hard to do everything from trying to set up and plan RPs (since we simply don't have the encounter density needed for randomly running into people to suffice for keeping plots from stalling out) to simply finding out what people want out of their RP, or even simply building relationships at an inter-player level.

Why is this?  Is this just me, or is this something we need to sit down and have a discussion as a community about?

10
General Discussion / An apology, for old scars of the past...
« on: July 21, 2015, 07:22:47 pm »
For those of you who...remember my past ways and the non-PG-13 territory they took me, and were in any way made uncomfortable about it:


I'm terribly sorry for making you uncomfortable; it was a tough time for me in some ways, and it was territory that, in hindsight, I shouldn't have ever treaded on to begin with; not that I knew it at the time, though.  Can we move on, and start holding a more open conversation, not just as characters, but as players as well?

11
In-Game Roleplay Events / Re: [GM EVENT] The Tevnaa Festival
« on: July 20, 2015, 05:32:53 pm »
Definitely hoping to make it there!  Should be a good contest, too :D (certainly better than the jousting, for which Kaerli was mostly out of her element)

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In-Game Roleplay Events / Re: [CONTEST] The Starphire Tourney
« on: July 07, 2015, 07:28:51 pm »
Sadly, Kaerli will not be able to make the first bout with the current choice of schedule, nor will her squire.  Does this mean she cannot compete at all?

13
General Discussion / Re: RPed combat -- war or sport?
« on: July 05, 2015, 04:13:30 pm »
Why not both?
This determines how we hew what we consider "allowable" -- combat as sport means that trying to use spells off-label and prepare elaborate tricks before a fight is frowned upon, while combat as war means that trying to force sportsmanship is frowned upon, and highly involved tactical play isn't as useful either.

I find myself rather splitting down the middle -- I like the tricky stuff because I like ingenious approaches to problems, but the tactical side has an allure for me as well...

14
General Discussion / RPed combat -- war or sport?
« on: July 04, 2015, 11:20:42 pm »
So, I was reading an article about combat in D&D and was wondering if the core thesis applied to how we RP combat in PS as well, with some players leaning much more strongly towards sport and others much more strongly towards war...or is there some overpowering reason that we should stick to one side of this divide or the other?

Discuss, flame, whatever...

15
General Discussion / Re: RolePlay
« on: June 29, 2015, 07:13:07 pm »
Let's see... I want to touch on two things:

Quote
But we're talking about games that have no GM.  In that case, it is very possible to have conflicting interests that must be resolved, and if you can't settle for an arbitrator then you exclude an entire class of players from your RP.  Is that what you want?

Traditionally, the way many of us handled this decentralized play is when one player attempted to do something to another, then one who is acted upon decides if the action was successful and if so, how effective it was. The idea behind this is it eliminates the effects of god modding, but it requires honor. Without that honor, you run into problems. The most obvious problem in the case of god modding via invulnerability.

Dice can be used as an arbiter, but not everyone likes dice. I sometimes just discuss doing a die roll with the other player and go with it. Some players are more inclined to go with judgment or whatever.

The problem with using game mechanics to decide is that there's a huge disparity in stats among players - so much so that pairing players of such different stats makes no sense at all. We're talking gods and ants. Yes, you could make skill tiers but even that is hard to do fairly and that kills the fun of players randomly joining in if they notice that you are playing near them. What some of us do is to ignore stats completely and role play having some basic area of proficiency. Again, honor/trust is needed here. For a player who has an obsession with being overpowered, this does not work well.

When the majority of players play one way, and then another consistently tries to defy that system with a way that the majority of players disagree with, that player effectively excludes themselves via their choice to not adapt.


Re: Playing a Kran.

It's funny that Cairn said that playing a kran was hard. I made one or two attempts at it and found it to be rather awkward. I think the mistake that I made was playing into the strong, moronic stereotype. Also, krans look huge and powerful and like they are made of stone, but the settings and game mechanics kind of at odds with this.

To which I ask one question: is that power disparity something that is, or should be for that matter, in-character observable?

Because that seems to be the crux of our problems -- I play Kaerli as powerful as she is partly because to do otherwise would contradict her observed abilities in the game mechanics (i.e. that power disparity is observable/IC because the mechanics are the only data provider).  However, most RPers seem to ignore the magnitude of that power disparity in favor of some notion of "believability", as if said power disparity was an OOC artifact slated to go away completely as soon™ as the game is rebalanced properly (which will likely require a top-to-bottom overhaul of skills and stats, but that's a topic I've already broached in another thread).  Or in other words -- should the ability of some characters to do things like slay Ulbers in (armored) hand-to-hand be treated as a legitimate in-character capability, or something that's simply an artifact of the game?

Ignoring stats and skills altogether, of course, raises the spectre of mob interference/lack of hunting capability as a problem, as well...(while some characters are in metagame positions where they can hunt and defend themselves from aggressive mobs effectively without having highly developed stats/skills, this is by no means universal, and isn't going to be impacted positively by whatever balance changes come down the pike, because vertical balancing doesn't give you the opportunity to fix the problems that ail PS' combat system)

Kran are only hard to play when your kran doesn't identify as male or female and you gotta use the kranouns all the time.  ;D

One of my suggestions to making the unsociability of kran more interesting and interactive is to either force them into a situation with some sort of backstory (I've been sent here to do ___, ___ stole something from me and now I'm searching for them, my friend ___ is causing trouble and I should probably do something about it, etc). That, or take inspiration from antisocial behavioral disorders. Just partially though, since they're good natured or come from a place where they don't see the wrong in what they're doing. When you throw a certain cultural background into a melting pot like Hydlaa, there's going to be mixed reactions and it's great to focus on the bad reactions your character gets ICly, because that's where conflict grows from.

At the end of the day, with kran or any of the races for that matter, the amount you're able to do with your character comes from the amount you're able to interpret from established lore, rather than just taking it for face value and not deviating (...deviating reasonably).
The lore could do with a major overhaul and restructuring -- whoever thinks that the lore of a sandbox world should be told in the form of stories should be dropped on their head a few times to reboot it.  More precisely, the PS lore, in addition to not being well-fleshed-out (which is a different story), is not designed to be referenceable...there is still far too much that is only spoken of in quests, which doesn't work for a game that really should be centered around interactions between player characters.

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