RPG Soapbox

I guess I'm the only person who enjoys these problem players. They shake things up and make the game interesting for the more established players. Granted, they're only fun in small quantities (usually till they get banned [See: Father in the Sabbat game]), but for the run it's always fun to see what the next issue will be.

Thats true, with out problem players there would be nothing fun to do.

I remember the day Beast was banned. it was fucking hillarios. The guy has absolutely zero balls, like what happened with Indignation there. If there's no blues around, that spineless moron will run his mouth for hours. Second a blue walks in , he goes silent. I remember something along the lines of him trying to appeal to keep his character. I believe my response was something like "You stuck your hand in a monsters mouth. It's werewolf, and you get cool post mortem renown"

Considering that's all the renown that dimwit would have recieved in most of his character career, he should have embraced his death.

I think this is the only player that I asked if we could look into his age to see if he was really 18.

Ah, the Ballad of Beast...

I remember it well. A young, bright-eyed narrator freshly recruited to the likes of Rural. Minding my own business and running my first ever scene in Werewolf. A 10 person combat scene.

There were land sharks. BIG. SCARY. LANDSHARKS. These landsharks, as they were written, go for the biggest threat first. So, they went after Beast and his super epic hammar of doomz.

Beast parried the BITES of the Sharks with his Fetish. He stuck a legendary, bad-ass, handed-down-to-later-generations FETISH in a Shark's mouth. Those are breakable, you know.

The Fetish broke. He cried and shit-talked the Rural ST team to death on his Jotunnslayer packboard. Thor deleted his character and he was venub&. This was after all the crying about him not being able to travel between Septs, and because he was a douchebag to some kinfolk.

Anyway, all in all, good riddance.

Love,
Porcelain

I started a post here like four hours ago with the intent of blasting the chat, with the Rural venue in particular. But... let me change that. For my... well, let's be honest, plain rudeness about a scene in Rural, I got put on an "enforced vacation" for a couple of months there. Ultimately, the scene got nulled and all, but I was just livid about being removed for that time.
Until I spoke with the new Administrator Aldrich. The man was so courteous, polite, and willing to stop and address anything I said with genuine concern for my point of view and mindset... even though the 'vacation' remains the exact same, I'm actually satisfied with it. Hell, I'm kind of looking forward to it now.

So... post switched from a flame to a bit of glowing praise for Aldrich as an Administrator. I'm very impressed.

QFMFT.

I had my concerns about Aldrich doing double duty as an Admin and Head ST. I voiced those concerns. Thusfar, however, I'm in agreement w/ Seraph in that the dude is pulling it off with skill and aplomb.

What a refreshing change!

Tossing out another review as experiences come and change.

Sabbat
I made a new character and jumped back into the fray here. The game's still pretty so-so. It's active and Unv-bar is pretty quick to answer any requests or needs for the game's concern. I haven't really seen Dakken since I returned to the game, but I'm under the impression he's still around and doing things because of the storyline material he posts on the forums.
The game has upswings and downswings, and right now it's on an up. Good time for anyone to join before it plateaus and heads back down again.

Anarch
There's not really an Anarch game to speak of. Rude's on vacation and we don't have any other Anarch STs. Not that there's a lot going on anyhow, the PCs of the game remain few and far between with the only RP going on being the combat twinks jumping into thirty minute scenes of teaching each other Protean and Celerity.

Camarilla
Haven't played this one in awhile, but the wife assures me it's still going strong. From my understanding they're doing things with Influences now where the social and political climate can change them. Making the suckiest background [anything you can do with Influences can easily be duplicated with Resources and/or Allies] even weaker. Still, my interest has been piqued enough to start slapping a Tremere together to join in.

Urban
After shooting for a Silver Fang with some 40 ancestors all doodled out on a family tree, several with elaborate backstories and his own running a page or two... and getting declined, I upturned my nose and went to angst quietly in the corner. The former Kinfolk ST Canary turned me around with snowballing some concepts, so I may yet give this game a shot. It still boasts the largest active venue on IV and if any new players who aren't averse to Werewolf wander by, this is definitely their first stop.

Rural
Some are aware, some aren't of what went down there a few weeks ago. The Rural game had a huge storyline where a giant ebil Spirit was going to destroy the world... or something. The venue split into thirds for the climatic end of the storyline. One group went to kill the spirit (Pil'Monti), one group went to protect the bawn from his army's counterattack, and one unlucky group got to go hang out with the kinfolk and watch 'em.
Each group happened simultaneously, though the scenes were ran at seperate times. Yours truly got to oversee the guarding of the Kinfolk. Sucks for renown, but eh. I volunteered so no one to blame but myself, right? Anyhow. Scene one went off and finished, some died, some won. Nice story. Scene two followed. Some died, some won, nice story. Scene three went off.

...except no one was informed about it. The scene was broadcasted on the Kinfolk forums the night before it was ran (before no notice was given at all on a date), and I and my pack only saw it the morning before it was ran. Since I had all of two hours notice and things to do (like... sleep) I asked the ST if the scene would require Garou presence or was it just an RP thing? The ST [Kiira] gave me a "nah, you're fine, don't worry about it" type thing. And I left.

That afternoon I came back to a bunch of dead kinfolk. Namely the ones associated with my pack and mated to my PC. What. The. Eff.
Confronting the ST running it [Laggie] I got a very curt "Dude, leave me the eff alone, I'm still running the scene. You want to complain? Go to Kiira." And complain to Kiira I did! Who basically said "lawl, if I told you there would be combat, than you would've known there would be a trap! So that's why I tricked you and hid the scene from you. Can't you appreciate how masterful that was?" -.- Naturally, I did not. Citing that my PC was designated over the last few weeks of guarding the Kinfolk to where I even had to void joining all the kewl scenes everyone else got to jump in on and that epic renown, I felt shafted in her sneaking the scene in and lying to me. I, in my usual "tactful" way told her as much, and dropped some choice accusations along the lines of "assassinating my kinfolk", etc etc. No profanity or anything that violates chat rules, mind you. But some good impotent venting. "Take it up with the Admins." was the response.
Well, I huffed and with upturned indignant nose went to bitch to the Admins! They conferred with the Rural Sts and Hellbilly [who plays a key member in my pack] and several hours later delivered unto me their answer. The scene would be nulled and reran with the people designated to protect the Kinfolk allowed to be there. But naturally a concession had to be made to keep the STs happy too. Hellbilly and I had to be banned for a month each for complaining and for not being politer about being shafted.
Ahhhbuh?
That wasn't all, mind you. It was a month's worth of docked XP, and technically a 45 day ban [bringing the docked XP up to 75 days worth total]. But... they were doing that in lieu of an official Warning. We should be happy.
Naturally, we were pissed. Granted, we got what we wanted and what was fair, but it sets a shitty precedent to punish people who in retrospect are proven right just so you don't upset the other party too. But... with Aldrich [man, he's a great admin] at the helm, we grudgingly accepted and went to wait out our time.
A week later, Hades [now fired for mass corruption] had one of his final acts overturning Kiira's ban and gave us Warnings. A final "fuck you" from the crappy Admin. Well, at least he got kicked from the team for doing that kind of stuff, yeah? Anyhow, I appealed with the Admin who were [are?] considering an overturn of it and went to Kiira. Since the ban and XP docking were done in lieu of the Warning, and Hades gave me the Warning anyhow, that meant she was going to remove the ban and re-add the XP, right? "LOLLERSKATZ NO WAI! AWWW Y U MAD 4?"
So... Aldrich can talk a guy who got temp-banned and screwed out of 80 days of XP without having broken a single chat rule into not being upset about it. But add the Warning and the continuation of that first, and you do get awful riled up.
I may or may not play here still. Kiira, while proving to be draconian and nasty when you piss her off is still a decent enough ST under normal circumstances. If I stay, another episode of fuckery will probably see me go (I know a couple of others players quit altogether about the scene, but I'm inclined to believe if I stay they will too).

Orpheus
The game's had a recent spike of activity facilitiated by a few new faces in it. As always, it's kept rather small and the core players all seem to get along famously. It doesn't seem to be very scene-driven just now (I'm in the Crucible with the HST, the narrator has been MIA awhile now, and the third ST is like... perpetually ill the last couple of weeks), but there aren't any complaints from any players in that regard. It's quite RP-driven and loads of fun for the people in it.

Demon
I just started the game for the first time. I managed a scene that my computer skrood me out of early on, but it was rather fun from the get-go. From my understanding the game's in an upswing itself with lots of plot and intrigue going on, some ST-driven, some player-driven. Having never played Demon before, it's very flashy and new to me, so I'm rather enjoying it.

Mage
Like with Demon, I'm new to the game but unlike with Demon I'm still confused off my ass how the mechanics work. I [with some help] managed to bluff my knowledge of the game adequately enough to get sanctioned, but after that I hit a brick wall. Particularly since I couldn't imagine a reason for my emo-y Hollow One to hang out in restaurants with pun-names like "The Waffle Truth" or "Wok Around the Clock". Despite that, I'm not discouraged and am looking forward to someone weaseling my way into the mainstay of the game.

Mortal
...is that even a real venue? BWAHAHA!

Changeling
Nothing much to report here outside trading the odd passive aggressive exchange with InsanityPersonified. It's hard to tell when he's genuinely threatening me or when he's joking. But then I imagine it's hard for him to tell the difference between my snarky insulting and my goodnaturedly teasing. =P From the outside I've heard that activity has dropped off a bit, but what is run is the kind of fare that I'm not particularly fond of. [Cutesy scenes and 'lets pull pranks on teacher!' kinda stuff. But again, that's a third party bit of information and should be taken with a grain of salt.]

Independent
I'm not really sure if anything is going on in this venue. I know we've only got the one Indie ST and I haven't really seen him doing anything in a few months, but I have seen him around. I know that when I played here, the severe inactivity from the ST and playerbase saw me delete that PC in a fit of boredom. I'd recommend [as I intend to] hanging back until they hire another guy or two to really pump the venue full of life.

And there's my review, some good, some bad. I'll expect flaming from anyone sympathetic to venues where I gave that some negative feedback. [And possibly some of my "admirers" from other topics, following me around to troll.]

It has been awhile since we gained any kind of overview from the game on Immortal Vigilance. Being that, I created a recent list of reviews on the current state of the game. We’ll start with the bad, the medium, and then the good. And the flaming that follows in the wake.

(Independent Vampire) – The Independent branch of the Vampire game has probably suffered the worst in the last six months. To think that it was more active when there wasn’t a residing storyteller over the venue seems hard to believe. In the past five months the venue has suffered a number of deletions and forced retirements that have made it inactive to near depleted at best. From general consensus this is from the reinforcement of strict rules that prohibit (XP) expenditures. The other issues come from the inactive of the proceeding storyteller. In most regards, Grunger Joe should have been hired as a Gangrel Storyteller, for that is his true passion in the venue. His heavy-handed approach towards the game has steered most of the players away from logging in. On (IV) by the House Rules, general guidelines have been constructed related to spending experience points. In the Independent venue these rules that have been written up do not apply. It is subjective to Grunger Joe’s personal viewpoints of the player in question. The only story line that I can recall being pushed is the creation of the Gangrel setting and his former player character being made leader of the Gangrel in Jefferson. Which should be the focal point of any storyteller, to ensure that your former character is played in a position of power in the game. I am sure the general population really cares.

(Camarilla Vampire) - Couldn’t say, as I have been out of the fray do to lack of interest. I see they still have court scheduled at certain points and players make an effort to attend. I think the venue was more successful under the guidance of Storytellers like Witchkin and JoeJames. But, the venue does at least have an active storyteller at its helm from what I can see.

(Anarch) - It's dead Jim, but atleast we have Rude, who is an understanding Adminstrator to the Vampire Game.

(Changeling The Dreaming) - Changeling seems to have fallen off the face of the planet. Which I have to find humor in, here it was believed that as soon as they got rid of Seraph causing so many problems in the venue that the venue would ultimately take off. Couldn’t have been farther from the truth. Whether it is to do stagnation, lack of motivation, or lack of helpful guidance from the storyteller team. Changeling is an all time low that could be compared to the Independent Vampire Venue. (Non-Existent) The venue still seems to center around the same two characters as always. A Baron and a Baroness that actively harbor story lines to themselves. Just a general idea, if a venue is tanking, shouldn’t the first change be in a leadership capacity? The venue promised to include the Unseelie characters of the venue, but that promise fell through. Instead they found ways to venue ban or force the active Unseelie to quit for the most part. Leaving us with the traditional hugs, kisses, and serving of ice cream that we all love and enjoy at Freehold. It’s a shame, underneath RudeGirl and HellBilly the venue really blossomed into its own.

The Good

(Demon The Fallen & Orpheus) The most enjoyable of my experienced venues have been those put together by the Demon and Orphesus team. In my experience, they house the most qualified and intelligent storytellers that Immortal Vigilance has to offer. Keep up the good work.

(Sabbat – Vampire) Despite problems from the player base, the Sabbat game is improving over time. I look for it to return to glory in the near future.

(Mage) - The Coffee Shop and Waffle of Truth continue to doom the entire venue.

[Conclusion] - I have seen worse and I have seen better. (IV) is on neutral ground. Borderline negative numbers.



There is something that really bugs me about this entire event, though I am going by what I have heard about this situation that took place (IC). Basically Kirra (Head Werewolf Storyteller) is in a relationship with RudeGirl (Player of said Kinfolk that was killed during the scene.) From what I understand and rumors are, is that this Kinfolk was killed on the principle that Kirra was jealous over RudeGirl being mated to anther Garou in the Rural venue. Now, not only is the dumbest shit that could ever happen, it should never be allowed, period. If we are going back to the days when Storytellers are offing characters whom cyber with their pets, well shit. Something needs to be done. Most childish thing to have a comprised storyline over keyboard penetration. (These are just the rumors in question about the scene.) Keep your personal life separate from the game?

Second question - Though I might already know the answer. Why is it that the chat is used for a homebase for online dating? Do you need a life time supply of ugly women and fat geeky looking men? Could it possible to just play the game with out Jerry Springer type drama? Oh Noz.

You cybered my girlfriend. Now you will die!

I need a cool signature like Mikes. Someone make me one? :/

The "Campground attack" in which kin were killed was a scene that I laid the groundwork for, and was supposed to run, but couldn't due to College conflicts. It was a last minute idea to provide a further situation to the setting that was in no way planned any more than a day or two in advance. It was felt that if we made the players wait (and be scene locked) for -another- week until I was able, that it would be unfair and stalling to them. Thus Kiira ran the scene that Sunday (instead of me doing it Thursday.) She then had to leave before most of the scene was over, in which Laggie took over.

So either there is a grand conspiracy within the Rural venue, or it is simply a matter of events that when looked upon in a certain light allow one to see what they want.

For any further comments and explanations of the scene, or the situation in general, please utilize my FPM inbox.

Enjoy!

Well, while neither confirming or denying what Ceoris said as the motivation, a few facts around the situation. Kiira has historically made PCs attached to RudeGirl's in relationships. [Her Changeling, Orpheus, Mage, Urban Garou, etc etc] In the case of the Rural game, my PC actually stole RudeGirl's PC away from a Kiira NPC she was sleeping with [I find it personally distasteful for an ST to use an NPC in a relationship with a PC, but to each their own]. Now, from four or five people I was warned that Kiira would be pissed about that and either mine or RudeGirl's PC would find a quick demise sooner rather than later. [In fact, I remember one scene where some mind-controlling Banes ran by Kiira showed up and tried to force me to murder her PC. *Cough*]

But, in pure honesty, I dismissed the notion. Granted those two are close and she's a bit possessive, but... nah. That's just crazy talk. Until the scene I was waiting for was deliberately hidden from me and my pack [DiM can say what he likes, they never posted the scene announcement on the Garou boards nor contacted any one of us at all] and then the scene progressed with six Fomori attacking defenseless Kinfolk by themselves and killing ONLY RudeGirl's PC before "being ran off".

This isn't me agreeing or disagreeing with what Ceoris said, mind you. I've fought very VERY hard to not have an opinion either way on that allegation. But that is the reasoning for people that are thinking that. Whether it's valid or trolling everyone can decide for themselves.




I married someone I met on the chat games. >.>

I have no idea to be honest, it was merely a story I heard from multiple people on the phone. I don't play in Rural so I couldn't say either way. I will say the whole scene in question is pretty suspect all around, especially with the prior ties. Player Characters cybering with storyteller (NPCS)? I thought that concept was banned for almost a decade. And if it is true (Which it seems possible at this point.) A: A major abuse of power, B: Using storyteller characters to advance cyber relations?, C: Unproductive to the venue as a whole and led to a number of people being banned & XP docked over nothing that should be related to the venue.



No one's perfect.

http://www.immortalvigilance.net/forum/ ... 33&t=31312

http://www.immortalvigilance.net/forum/ ... 12&t=31313

Call me silly...

But wouldn't the IV CtD ST's time be better spend running scenes and taking care of player needs, rather than posting help wanteds and playing their own PCs?

Slightly off topic for the whole thread I shall admit, but god damn it if it does not make my blood boil when I see things like posted. Because you, in fact, -cannot- replicate the things with Resources and Allies and the very break-up that is used thanks to MET and the like is what has led to this whole stupidity.

It's why you end up with people with no Allies/Contacts with Influences and, well, people with Allies/Contacts with no Influences. The two are symbiotic and work together to mutually insure the control required, but they cannot replace them. Especially since the allies required to replace respectible levels of Influence are 1) limited to certain spheres of it and 2) are at the 4+ level.

Anyway, carry on.

An example of the Immortal Vigilance "Health" Influence



My PC who has Resources 4 and Allies (Chief of Medicine at Magid Hospital #2) needs to acquire a cadaver. I use my Ally to tell him to send me an unclaimed body. "No wai!" he doth proclaim. Evidently, there's a lot of paperwork involved. So, I offer to grease his palm with a few thousand dollars, and suddenly "he thinks its doable". Resources 4 substitutes for Influence 4 in just about every case.