Friendship Simulator
Are we playing one?

But on the practical side - be the change you want to see. It's a grueling change to alter narrative of 100+ players, but doable, just appreciate that it will take a lot of work and time so… Pace accordingly to not burn out fast.

My advice is the same as Aida's. Put in the effort to change things the way you want to see them change. Look for people of similar mind to help you. Expect push-back. Expect difficulties and hangups on the way. Expect and accept consequences. It's not the easiest thing in the world, but it's been done before.

Killing is fast, easy, relatively safe and also… Very final. There are not many steps left for escalation after.

Also the word cyberpunk will translate to 'anime' as far as a lot of people are concerned, so you get a lot of players who want to play anime girls smashing their bits together with other players playing anime girls. It is what it is, as long as they fatten up and die often enough to feed the conflict scene then its maybe a net positive.

"Killing is fast, easy, relatively safe and also… Very final. There are not many steps left for escalation after."

Literally not one word of that statement is true.

Still what you're claiming is not true. Death couldn't be less of a finality in Sindome. Anyone getting permanently killed by means other than their own inclination are vanishingly rare.

And it's sort of a meme how many people will flock to the site of active combat and get themselves involved, it definitely feels fast inside of it when the combat shakes kick in but it's a fairly protracted process from the outside and can take minutes to resolve.

And if it was easy we wouldn't be having monthly and yearly pow-wows about how difficult it is. So yes I agree that I am often condescending and sharp tongued to players, and about players, but I don't think I'm wrong on this particular point.

I can see and feel the anime influences with different people I play with, just like I can feel the movies people get inspiration from, and even a few books (I admit, Im not as well read in cyberpunk as I wish, but I love it in movies and shows)

But Anime is not just Hentai or Ecchi or wtf ever. Some of the most brutal scenes I've witnessed have been in anime, and I see that reflected in some of the players here, wanting to work up to that power fantasy.

I guess my first point here is, don't throw shade on other peoples influences. We are all born somewhere.

That being said. Yes, it can be tricky to do mean stuff, because we have around 100 active players. Most of us know eachother. Most of us have friends and they have friends. And killing your friends friend is how you lose your friend. And that does blow. Because without your friends, you can't do some of the coolest shit this game has to offer.

But there are ways to mitigate this. Disguise is one of the best things in this game, and I'll die on this hill. Also, I'de like to note that in the last quarter of a year (4 months) I've noticed a solid uptick of corp vs corp stuff going on, and this has caused an uptick in plotting, planning, and smaller groups forming around those jobs. And that's only the stuff I see as a player.

I think things are working a little bit away from the 'friendship simulator' OP discussed about, though this appearance is still very in place. But just under that. Just under that, I'm seeing friends sell out there friends to get ahead a little, I'm seeing people pushing their own plots, and I see people pushing conflict.

Friendship simulator is broad. Friends are fine. I think there should be scales of friends. Not everyone's your ace. Not everyone's your significant other. There's tiers. I think not being willing to take jobs against any of your friends is a problem. I think running to help any of your friends for free no matter the odds, the conflict, etc is a problem.

I think everyone would have more fun as a whole if we all bought into the awful world around our PCs. There's a lot of joking IC. In person, but on SIC especially. A lot of waving away the grittiness, the awfulness of the world. The streets. The oppressive feel of the corporations. The danger of Red. A lot of not taking what's going on seriously. Treating stuff as a joke has its moments.

But if the majority of a response is turning something into a joke or always responding with jokes, those responses start to lose the novelty. And it turns from a few responses here and there to the default response. Teaching new players and characters that's the themely way to respond. I don't think it is. I know some others feel the same, that it isn't.

I'd like to think most of us are here to tell stories. Sometimes our PCs have a big part in the story. Some times our PCs have a small one. Sometimes they're the winners, sometimes they're the losers. But if our response to every part of a story, every thread, every act, is the exact same regardless of what's involved, it diminishes the response. Because at that point it isn't responding as real people, it's sorta responding as a caricature.

I'd ask everyone to do their best in responding to stories, events, other people, danger or good times as part of an interactive novel being written together and the characters as real and with depth. A collaboration. Rather than responding with the knowledge that this is a game, you the player know what's codedly possible, you know how the limitations. And I'd like to give a personal example.

One of favorite things to do for several years was that if like there was a threat to the city was to send WCS off to check the sewers or some of the supplies outside of Withmore. Look for dangers to the infrastructure, tampering with equipment, blockages, etc. Threats that I knew codedly was unlikely to have been done by staff. And that they probably wouldn't find anything from a mechanical perspective. But it made a reason to pay people, a reason for people to feel tension. I'd like to think it added to the story that oh, this is really happening, oh there might really be danger going on. And it helped bring others together to RP and like they were helping in some way with/against a serious situation.

And I'd like to think that mindset also applies to not running to help all your friends for any reason for free just because we all know the game doesn't really have ninety-five million people. Or that yeah, a group of people could maybe overtake one solo. And that the solo can't headshot you no matter their skill and kill you or your friend in one action. The same applies for joking about everything, treating everything like it's minimal or a joke. Treating death and threats like a joke all the time.

And all of us, including us in this thread, should always look and ask ourselves: Are we doing as much as we think? Or are we part of the same problem we blame others for? How can we ourselves grow?

I agree with the ideal of setting examples to follow even if I don't do a great job of it.

So say you have your friend Mike Bibby. He's not a close friend. He's just a guy you maybe sic with a few times a week or maybe every day. But he's not someone who's your ace cool. Even though he was a great passer in the NBA for a long time and now is a great advocate for why people roided out look insane.

Mike talks some shit or gets himself targeted. Someone hires a solo to come after him. Mike knows he's stepped in some stuff he shouldn't and he's probably going to get his ass beat at best. But you let Mike know you've got his back. And for free. And maybe Mike has a lot more friends like that.

Except now Mike has no reason to pay the lowbie or midbie bodyguards/solos to watch his back. Mike has no reason to buy data on the one who's coming for him. Mike shrugs it off and doesn't pay a solo to strike first at the guy who's hired someone to come after him.

And when lowbie, midbie solos and bodyguards, bouncers, etc don't get interaction, don't get jobs, they sort of fade out from those jobs. And that impacts the growth of the game, because then less people go into those roles, less of them survive the early stages, and we stagnation at the end game of what type of combat characters exist and what ones will take jobs and what kind of jobs they'll take. So the pool shrinks.

And batko to your point, humor is a coping mechanism, that's true. But if it's constantly being done and it keeps growing, then that's what new PCs, new players see and think the game is about and it starts to spiral into whatever we have right now.

With the exception of a few job roles where protecting your fellow employees is expected, which I feel the need to clarify should only apply while on-premises at least in Red sector, you also should not be running to the aid of your coworkers just because they're coworkers.

If they bring consequences down on themselves through repeated acts of fucking around, and aren't paying you to protect them, don't.

I personally hate the term white knighting because of experience where it was used against my friends online, but I will say neutrally that 'white knighting' is not when your friend stands up for you. It's when a random person does because of something like gender, etc. People complaining about white knighting when someone is saving someone who they truly care about, is really just complaining that they lost. Sorry, but, deal with it.

As far as setting boundaries where not everyone someone might be friendly with is someone they're going to put their life on the line for, while it's sometimes a little awkward to be like 'yeah that's your problem, I am not getting the middle chum!' with characters I like, I have found players are actually pretty good about picking up on the subtext that not every conflict needs to be a mass conflict if I leave those hints.

Players will come to the defense of their ace kool, sure, but they also have a habit of dying on a hill for people they've known for three days or immies who are fresh in the game, or an alias they just happened to think was funny. Players will find reasons to get involved just for something to do, and really should ask themselves more, do I really need to be putting myself in the middle of this? Is it telling a story or stopping a story from happening?

Sometimes you can like someone and still expect them to solve their own problems.

The point of the discussion is that there are plenty of reasons a character might say no to something, but you only need to make up one reason why they -would- do something. For the sake of the story (RP in this case) it's sometimes better to figure out a reason why your character would do something that's uncharacteristic of their normal behavior.

My characters across all sorts of games (mostly tabletop) go through this tons of times if they live long enough. Something happens and it twists something inside and they compromise some ideal or rule. Just this one time. But then something happens and they do it again. And again. And before you know it, it's a new behavior.

Withmore is full of hardship and terrible things. I don't imagine it'd be hard for most to come up with reasons or end up facing things that make them act out of their norms. It's really on us to say, yea, Joe Baka would do this because this. We are the puppet masters after all. The city has a way of changing people if you let it sink into you.

Closing out with an addition to Crashdown's point about not helping friends for free, I have a few simple questions.

Does your friend care about you? Does your friend want to see you thrive? If the answer to these questions is yes, then the next question, "Then they should be paying you right?", seems like a no-brainer to me. Show your friends you care. Pay them. If they don't, are they really your friend?

In similar way then when the PC started a mess and was in trouble for it, they got almost instant and direct message from those powerful people of "This is a mess you started, so to be clear, we are staying out of it".

Those were greatly formative experiences on how to be a friend without stifling someone else's conflict along the way. They were there for my PC, they would act if my PC hired them as a Solo, but besides that they were very clearly and openly out of it. Some could argue that "but my character is better friend than that" and while that may be true, this is a game, not real life, and "my character" excuse to stifle rp is just… Not good for the game.

It's your character, you created it, you control it, and you can change it in a way that's more fun and engaging for everyone.

Gallows humor is humor at the expense of yourself and the inevitability of your doom, not cracking what are essentially constant 9/11 jokes on 9/12.

Which is not to say it's a binary choice between tragedy or comedy, but taking a more serious stance has been something I've personally wanted to do but felt there wasn't a lot of appetite for at large.

I also wanna say that, 0x1mm, if people are saying the game is too miserable, why are they playing a dystopic theme? It's meant to be dark. I find it way more immersion breaking when people punch down on my character(s) for being negative all the time. That should be more normal. Not saying everyone has to do it, but it shouldn't be seen as weird.

And the whole argument around not doing things because your character wouldn't, yeah of course your character can change, and can reprioritize. I always take that stuff into regards when I do something, would my character maybe bend this rule, et cetera? But a recent character I played was extremely loyal, not jumping in for someone they held dear was wholly out of character.

The more you play the more you see the 'fluffiness' but the fact is it's always been there.

And there are still people who will mess you up, and not be 'fluffy'.

Ebb and flow, sometimes things happen, sometimes it does not.

If one just sits online all day every day, then of course you will notice that people aren't out and warstomping each other every morning and night.

It's a balance. I haven't notice that much of a change and I've been playing for 4 years.

But lets not forget nostalgia. The villains when we were new seem MUCH more scary then the villains when we've been playing for a while. I remember playing with Queen Lyla when she was a pledge. I remember when Black Mamba qualified for the UMC. Those are names that still ring to this day. But that doesn't mean we don't have our own evil bastards being evil in their own ways. And the next generation of players will, very likely, have a whole new set of villains then I did, when i started playing again a year ago. Things change, but the grit's still there.

I'm going to touch on some of the things mentioned with responses built around my own experiences in the game, rather than trying to be objective. I'm also going to paraphrase, out of laziness.

Obviously, as stated, these are my experiences and opinions. And yes, I'm very opinionated.

Violence often only happens with coded combat, and people are unwilling to flesh out these interactions more.

Here's the thing… A lot of players, from solos to non-combative schemers want to have these sorts of interactions. The problem is, that as mentioned above, when anything outside of "Drinks at Carnal's!" occurs, people swarm to the scene to get involved, and getting out with the target intact can become very complicated if you don't have the appropriate resources. This is especially true on upper sectors, where the grid is smaller, reaction times are reduced, and some players are literally just sitting around waiting for something to happen so they can get involved.

Everyone just seems to be seeking the next punch line, and is more focused on socializing through humor than sticking to theme.

I actually noticed a while back that PCs who didn't actively subscribe and engage in bouts of humor tended to get isolated in a very odd way. They could be respected, maybe even feared, but nobody seemed to want to involve themselves too heavily. This ultimately led to those characters struggling to get basic business plans or plots off the ground, amidst comments of them being "egotistical", "a caricature of a villain", etc. PCs that routinely project humor get praise, not only from the player community, but through GM puppeted SIC messaging.

There has been exactly one instance in my memory that I can recall a GM making a pubsic comment through a puppet about how everyone just seemed to be seeking the next joke. So if both players and GMs are encouraging that behavior and actively creating obstacles for those who attempt to form a darker, grittier, less sociable character… why is it any surprise that everyone jumps on that bandwagon?

There's not enough conflict. Everyone seems to just be friends, and are just protecting each other. Kill people more, it's themely!

Going to respond to this in two parts…

First, in regards to newer PCs being protected. Frankly, some of you are far too heavy handed with minor slights, and end up killing fresh PCs over and over before they even get their hooks into Withmore. Some have even been permed. Staff aren't the only ones capable of nudging players back into acceptable boundaries of gameplay, and sometimes they're simply not available. From my perspective, it is perfectly acceptable for a more established PC to insert themself into a situation that appears to be getting out of control, and temper it to a more moderate level for the players involved. This is especially true if they had a prior interaction and took an interest in establishing a relationship, or putting that character in their debt early on.

Second, I'm just going to echo the observation that there's a lot more going on behind the scenes than is obvious. I'll also point out that we need a healthy balance of "reliable chums" and backstabbers. A few years ago there was a hell of a lot of the latter, and the result was a perception that any larger or complex plot would never get off the ground, because the moment your plans were shared with another individual, they would sell it to your enemies for five cents on the dollar. I personally think a number of players grew exhausted with the dynamic, and then the pendulum swung the other way, resulting in huge friend groups that never fucked each other over, and ended up creating a barrier to conflict through numbers.

People just seem to want to hang out

So, for one thing, the entire MU* player community not only seems to be heavily socially oriented, but there is a huge drive for sexual content/interaction, from my experience. I need to make time to go and respond to the "no-selling" thread, considering it was my topic proposed for the town, but I'll touch on it a bit briefly. Some PCs make it abundantly obvious when you are interacting with them outside of their preferred playstyle. You will get eyerolls, yawns, and generally just a dismissive attitude toward an interaction they don't approve of, even when the circumstances should be tense. It's going to happen. No amount of policing is ever going to push players into a playstyle they don't want to participate in. I choose to view it as a boon to have more pieces moving on the board, pulling more chyen into the economy, or influencing your interactions with PCs more willing to reciprocate in subtle ways. Not every PC needs to be a pin on your board.

It does get a bit tiresome when people spam memes like "boat", "rat", "mayne", etc and what's worse is when those memes bleed into OOC-Chat (or perhaps they bleed from OOC into SIC, even worse) and are constantly looking for the next punchline.

My experience aligns with Quotient: if you don't do this, you're an outlier. But perhaps that's better if you really want to be a cyber PUNK.

So, for one thing, the entire MU* player community not only seems to be heavily socially oriented, but there is a huge drive for sexual content/interaction, from my experience. I need to make time to go and respond to the "no-selling" thread, considering it was my topic proposed for the town, but I'll touch on it a bit briefly. Some PCs make it abundantly obvious when you are interacting with them outside of their preferred playstyle. You will get eyerolls, yawns, and generally just a dismissive attitude toward an interaction they don't approve of, even when the circumstances should be tense. It's going to happen. No amount of policing is ever going to push players into a playstyle they don't want to participate in.

I hesitate to write this, because I do not want to speak for staff. I also do want to generalize.

That said, my recent experiences are guiding me to believe that there is a strong appetite among some members of the community to support and enable to characters who make a point of upsetting the apple cart, taking a steaming dump in people's bowls of social Cherrios, or otherwise playing up the punk, gritty, in your face "reality" of the theme and game world that SOME players seem to go out of their ways to avoid.

ProTip : Use @notes. Use 'think'. You never know who is reading what you write.

The main point of this thread though? I think that last year a much stronger case could've been made that the game was being "fluffy bunny" especially when staff was much more absent. It was a lot more obvious which characters were doing the heavy lifting generating chaos and conflict. Now when something happens I'm really not sure who did what even OOCly because there's so much more going on.

It can be a tricky thread for corporate players to instigate conflicts without getting iced out of social circles, as much as this topic is being critical of the idea of players being friendly with everyone, I do think you basically need an ace kool or two to play Sindome, just emotionally if not in practical gameplay support terms (though that helps too).

The current smell of CPI isn't the same as it was a year ago. I aint trying to say to much. But the best way I can describe it now is: "They are united against the Mix, but they are not united."

And I dig that. A year ago, corpsec was actively working with other corporations Sec to maintain the borin' status quo. It was, as far as I could tell, a fairly boring period in the gameplay. Now the corps feel separated again. When you swing at one, you aren't drawing the ire of a 3 headed hydra, just that Wyrm you picked a fight with.

And this has brought in an uptick of terrorism plots, and corp vs corp plots. I think things are building nicely right now. And I'm eager to see where this goes. (Mcguffins would be nice.)