Hug + Box = Death.

Take a step with me through my time machine. Let's travel back - back through the fog of war, back past unnecessary robotic vaginas and photoshopped stock models, back to a magical time for Cerberus Daily News - back when the posts were aplenty, Cerberus was a joke passed between salarian pirates, and the world was filled with jerks.

Jerks here, jerks there, jerks everywhere. The galaxy was filled with jerks. You couldn't swing a moxie without hitting a jerk - no matter where you turned, there was someone you’d like to see hit by a train. Or who blew up a train. Or typed insults faster than a speeding locomotive.

Thing is, jerks came in all flavors. There was the batarian jerk who danced circles around emancipators. There were the foul-mouthed jerky brokers you hated yourself for laughing with. There were the turian pirate jerks who laughed in your face, salarian jerks who launched flame wars with but a sentence, and even talking feline jerks who would take the mickey out of anyone.

The forum was better for it.

More than ever, in the days of post-ME3 Mass Effect, this board needs antagonism. It needs petty, bitchy people. It needs you to stand up, introduce cranky characters and shrelling insult one another for once.

And most of all, it needs people to stop taking these insults out of character. Because if I hear about one more attempt to bully someone into lowering their standards for someone else, I am going to swing my mighty, meaty banaxe and lop off a few accounts.

I’m not looking for a flood of Dwicks. I’m not looking for you to be as boorish as you can. Hell, one Dwick is probably enough for this forum. What I am looking for are characters that we all love to hate – the ones that (smart, petty, erudite or otherwise) get under our skin and make us want to read more. We need Corvaxes and Kiroks, Zoftans and j_proctors. We need manipulators, masterminds, people who see an insult as a means to an end and will use that means to get that end. We need smart people, smart characters, and (perhaps most importantly) smart heroes who can be assholes too.

What we don’t need are “sex threads” and krogan-hugging hippies. We don't need people stifling all arguments and invoking the Reapers to kill conflict. The occasional nice guy is fine, but conflict, upheaval and chaos (you know, the things that should be in great supply after the interstellar network exploded) are what drives a story. It’s what makes this place interesting, what brings new writers to the forum, and what, ultimately, you stick around for. We have already covered why sex for sex’s sake is a deterrent; likewise, I’d hope you’d realize that killing every conflict leaves us with nothing to write about.

Finally, stop driving away good players. The moderators have been drenched in complaints about characters being “too good” at their job, and have had to read way too many butthurt comments saying to lower their standards so you can keep up.

Please stop.

Posts like these tell us moderators that you are an uncreative killjoy that can’t think for yourself. It tells us we have to play by your rules, and that no one is allowed to be better than you, the special snowflake Good Person What Can Do No Wrong. Do not tell us this. Do not force us to choose between you and the creative jerk, because quite frankly we’d rather have the creative jerk than the placid milquetoast "Hero." If you honestly think someone’s being mean for the sake of being mean, spend time talking with that person on chat or in PM; nine times out of ten, they’re genuinely nice people who are merely taking more effort to make interesting characters than you are.

Not everyone is going to be nice. Not everyone is going to like you. But that is what drives conflict. It is what gets us out of our comfort zones, and what gets us to make good stories.

So let's stop being uptight assholes, leave that for our characters, and get back to making beautiful music together.

Well I guess that conversation needed to happen...

Ok first of all, I find your notion that jerk attitude = good roleplay at best worrying. Good characters come in all shapes and forms, and polite people are just as good as an asshat flinging insults like a monkey its feces. In this forum we have users like Diplomatic Immunity or Remember The Blitz, who are both impeccably polite (if of shady character) and are both awesome.
Any doofus can end all his posts by "You're an idiot.", that doesn't make it good roleplay. CDN doesn't need to be space 4chan to be interesting.
And the problem with insults IC is that you need to make sure you're not saying them because you actually feel contempt for the actual player. If we look at Pariah, who is Doing It Right, whether as her main or Mandatory, can brutally dress down my character and I won't even imagine it's anything else that IC.
On the opposite corner, I'll point out that both my characters have been called "passive aggressive", a surprisingly specific insult that was also leveled at me, ooc. It was obviously personal, and the people who did it are Doing It Wrong.
A good test would be the check you feel the need to insult every alts a player have, or insult his main over all of your alts. Now sometimes it's justified, but just double check to be sure. I know that for instance my character HereToHelp hates Mr_Sandman's guts, but my main 4Eyes4TheWin think he's an awesome entrepreneur and something of a role model. And I still double check regularly with Sandman on the chat to make sure we're still good.


Ho ho, Espiza, remember this chat we had about that? How it turned out that nobody ever asked Sandman to "lower his standards" or "dumb down his arguments", how the chat logs only showed Telos and I debating about how his character should maybe be classier about how he's a jerkass? And how we had the player's approval for this conversation, making us a very unusual type of bullies?
The truth of the matter is that at no moment nobody asked him to have his character become nice, and the idea that anyone asked him to dumb down his argument to level the playing field is what I'd charitably call misguided.
(Just in case you were actually talking about another case entirely, so sorry, but you have to admit this is a troubling coincidence)


That's actually true, but conflict doesn't mean people being schoolyard bullies to each other. See Asimov,especially in the Robots series, you'll find gentlemen discussing the fate of entire planets without raising their voice, opposing brilliant arguments without ever dreaming of insulting the person in front of them (even when said person is seriously considering dooming your homeworld).
Now that's an extreme example, the occasional schoolyard grade bully is fun too. But they way you think it should be the norm is baffling.
Opposing viewpoints is enough for conflict. Check the recent asari bashing threads, a lot of polite people were in strong disagreement and were arguing and world building all around. Maybe you thought it was boring, but I thought it was awesome.
There are dozens of ways to bring conflict, just because our characters behave like mostly well adjusted adults doesn't mean CDN will transform into care bear land.

About the sex threads I'm kind of confused, because I don't see them that much at all. Now you have to remember that according to Dippy there is nothing wrong with sex, what's wrong is sex as the entire driving force of a thread. A good example for me is Purple Vanguard and Harbinger of Progress' thread where they had a one night stand. At first glace you'd think they were doing it wrong, but it turned out a mostly a psychological story about how messed up they are, about their PTSD and their survivor's guilt. The sex was barely present.
Now let's consider the thread that was recently closed for being to racy. Hoo boy, that sure is a lot of... People talking to each other I guess? The only sexual component here is the setting that Zoftan made up. As far as we know the characters were about to do meaningful character interactions, not reenact fifty shades of Wrex.


Wow, if people actually say those things, it is indeed kind of sad... Are you sure that's what they meant though? Maybe they think a supposed krogan brute is too literate for instance, which if not justified could indeed be faulty rp.

I'd say you attach way too much importance in people insulting each other or trolling. If that's the way you play, cool, you add to the CDN tapestry in your own way. but that's you. Telos or Harrad like to be the absurdly nice guys, Taleeze and Daia like the caring and sensual nature of the asari, Snow likes to explore the darkest results of what war does to a person... They all add a lot. They all have their place, and they're all just as good as an insult spouting character.

In conclusion my advice would be :
1) Keep exploring the facets of the Mass Effect universe you like. Variety is life.
2) You won't like everything the other players do, that's ok. if can't appreciate it, just ignore it. Other people will enjoy it.
3) If you think the forum is lacking something, post it. If you think there is not enough characters of a certain type anymore (in this case jerks), bring new people. You can't bend other players to your play style.
4) When you're a jerk to someone, make sure that's not you venting your never on a player you don't like. Be sure your character has a good reason to do it.
5) If there really are people out there asking the mods to nerf other players, ho dear gods stop it! This is so sad it makes me want to cry!
6) If you're a mod and you received such a request, double check with the person to know if that's what they really meant.

I don't. Well the "people bullying others until they dumb down their characters" kind of felt aimed at least partly at Telos and I for obvious reasons, but the bulk of your complaint is visibly a global matter.

Alright. Let's get a couple things out of the way before this all goes too far.

1. This isn't about being a jerk character. I can see where you might get that impression, but no. This is about playing smart, about playing characters that are characters with some degree of intelligence. And yes, the board does need more jerk players. I can count on one hand and have fingers left to count with when it comes to how many players we have that have the backbone to play a devil's advocate. Classic baddies not withstanding, it's very hard to have a proper debate when everyone is arguing the same side in different words. Being able to antagonize other characters in a conversation is a good thing, and we lack people who do it intelligently, and THAT has created the attitude that's been driving good writers away. Every post you make should be a reflection of your character, and that has been in rare supply lately.

2. Bullying is an issue on this board as of late, and yes, there has been at least one blatant comment for someone to 'dumb down' their character so other can keep up. This is unacceptable in every form you can think of, and if someone has a complaint, yes, we will take it seriously. I understand there might be cultural barriers here, but if someone feels bullied (regardless of whether they are or not), we take it damn seriously and do investigate thoroughly and then decide the most appropriate course of action. We've been dealing with multiple victims and multiple aggressors (and we are not naming names, so don't ask), which leads me to:

2.5. This is not targeted at anyone in particular. If you (or anyone else) think it is, then you need to step back and ask yourself why. Chances are you won't like the answer.

3. It should be absolutely understood that anything written in certain forums is completely IC. As I said last night in the IRC, if you cannot separate it from OOC (and this goes for everyone, on both sides of the issue), then you need to step away from your PC/Mac/iPhone what have you and take a break from this site until you can. If you can't, we don't want you here, end of story. Not everyone has thick enough skin to deal with certain characters, and that's fine - but anyone who feels people are intentionally, maliciously targeting them through their characters needs to talk to the mods first, and maybe figure out if they aren't taking a bit too personally, which is the case nine times out of ten.

4. If your RP reads like soft-core erotica with no discernible subplot and too much description of biotic fetish toys in the first three to five posts, then yes, we will put a warning in the thread. Note that there was no demand in the example given to shut down the thread, and note that we left several other sex threads untouched due to the fact that sex was not the driving force.

I want people to take a moment to pause, and look at the characters that Causality brought up as examples:

AnaTherion
Sicaria
Corvax
Abad
Dietrich
VolClan
AFL
Kittens
Kirok
Proctor

What do these characters have in common? They all held opinions, sometimes unpopular opinions, and they weren't afraid to get in your face about them when necessary. Causality isn't asking for jerks and bullies. He's asking for characters who aren't about to roll over. Who are willing to act the heel. Who create or maintain conflict.


Agreed. And that means all shapes and forms. Including assholes.


No, they are not. You cannot be "polite" and fling insults, because the ideas are antithetical. The closest you might come is an Oscar Wilde-esque character who puts on airs while using bon mots and innuendo to undermine someone, but that's obeying the letter of the law, not the spirit of it.


Here's the thing: we are not writing the Dialogues of Plato. We're on a roleplaying messaging board roleplaying that we're on a messaging board. The level of discourse waxes and wanes, but people rarely debate in good faith. For comparison's sake, here's the five most recent comments from one article on a real news site (CBC):


I'm glad that we're more eloquent than that. But: you should still take a good look at what's above. If you know Canadian politics, you can spot two clearly right-wing people, two clearly left-wing, and a fifth who's questioning the report the article is based on. These people have different world views and opinions, and they're not going to be polite about it. Who's the jerk here?

CDN, as a concept, encompasses a galaxy's worth of individuals. They are not going to all get along, agree, or be nice to each other. Period. Nor should they.


Why should he be? Assuming the character isn't defying logic and established canon or breaking rules, why should anyone dictate how another player plays their characters?


Yes. We read more chat logs and forwarded PMs than you realize. The only legitimate bullies on this site we've seen are people who are repeatedly asking others to "tone down" their character.

And I'm almost done. One more thing:


For this I'm going to use compare-and-contrast. In this case: Dwick and A Fine Line.

Dwick says some of the cruelest, most abusive things on this site, but by and large players give him a pass because, rightly, they OOC see him in the role of a clown. They trust that regardless of what he's doing the player means no malice behind it. Meanwhile, whenever AFL began posting, I saw a chorus of whimpering on #CDN start up despite AFL never saying anything that was remotely as bad as Dwick's worst. But the players did not trust that the player behind AFL was acting in good faith. Which is ridiculous, because I was AFL. Not that anyone knew it, because I was deliberate about hiding the fact.

We cannot know what the person on the other side of the screen is actually thinking, no matter what they tell us. The onus is not on the other player to avoid potentially offending someone, the onus is on you (generic you) to trust the other player. If there's a legitimate problem, it tends to become obvious very quickly, both on the board and in chat. Being an asshole in good faith doesn't.

The board does not need more nice, polite characters. We need characters of all shapes and sizes and opinions. We need to grate against each other and piss each other off. We have to lose arguments and create rivalries. We are not all equal in all things and not all opinions have a leg to stand on. We have to put emotion and energy behind our posts, and to do that we have to be incensed and inspired to reply. Like Causality said:


Let's make friction.

@Niahm :

I really don't think Espiza confuses jerk characters and smart characters. I really hope for his sake anyway.
Again if you think the board doesn't have enough jerks, feel free to create one or encourage new players to join us. About the board not having enough smart characters for your taste, I'm sorry you feel that way (I don't for the record), but I don't think any rant would arrange that, people do as best they can. If they're indeed to moronic to create smart players, there is nothing you can do but create a new forum with the smart writers.

About everyone just assuming everything is IC, that's great on paper. But when another member uses all his alts to attack all your alts, constantly pointing out that everything you say has to be the work of a drooling idiot, after a few months I'm telling you it WILL be upsetting. If you think otherwise it's because you weren't on the receiving end of it.

Now the fair play thing to do for the offending member when he learns he's upsetting his target would be to just back off. It's like in any game, you try to let others have fun. In a FPS you have a right to stalk the same player and kill him all the time, to make sure he can't play. What does it make you though?


Honestly that's why people don't go to mods to solve that kind of problems but try to do it via PMs. You guys are very dismissive.


Ho come on Niahm, it was an open roleplay! Those are always "people just talk to each other" with no discernible subplot! Now out of curiosity, how you would treat that thread if it was created today?

@Overlord :
If you're implying that the current characters are doormats who just agree with each other after two posts I'm not seeing it.


Yes, no one want to get rid of them!

Yes you can! Again, Remember The Blitz : Polite character, just as good as Dwick, insults flinger.


I promise nobody is asking for that! But again you don't need to be a jerk to offer arguments and conflicts!

1) From a storytelling point of view, we thought the character benefited from higher class snark, more than base, often misogynistic insults.
2) From a story point of view, he's a CEO. When a CEO start trashing all the asari or telling them they "can't look past their own cleavages", it should cause a shitstorm anytime. That a CEO spend times on some forum during the day is an acceptable break from realism, but there should be a decorum I think in what he writes. Just my opinion though.
3) I really need you to pull the logs were anyone dictated anything. This was simple feedback, with the player's approval, which it seems is now called "bullying".

Again it feels like you guys are defending against hugboxing members who want to purge any jerk characters from the boards... That's not what's happening. What's happening is that some members get upset at the way they felt singled out by other members weeks after weeks, and they wanted to know what's up and if they could please tone it down, not because they're too idiotic to keep up, but because it's upsetting. Even in roleplay there is such a thing as fair play.
And if some members get the same feedbacks by several other members, they should ask themselves why their behavior is considered problematic while other abrasive characters aren't upsetting anyone OOC.

PY comes out of retirement for 5 minutes to offer the following possibly relevant observations, some of which have already been stated, some of which may not have been, and some of which may be considered insulting. He doesn't care, because he is invested more in maintaining an interesting IRC community rather than board roleplay.

1) In-character: On the pre-ME3 forums, if a character was 'bullied' by another character week after week, that character would respond by getting away or getting even. This is significantly more realistic roleplay than taking insults out of character and going "Oh Great Intercessor, smiteth my foe, for I am meek." Actually, scratch that, relying on a third party to fight your battles is becoming more and more of a mainstay of OOC society. This is very realistic!

2) If you, OOC, are getting upset by in-character rude comments to your Imaginary Space Alien, you are probably emotionally investing way too much of yourself into your character.

The subliminal messaging I've been using on IRC is wor--erHEM. I mean, uh, yes. I agree.

just a quick comment from someone who was openly accused of this omnious hugboxing (ooc in chat) and who gave a player I had a problem with personal and private feedback.

I can't see any dictating of anything when giving an opinion. It is the discretion of the player to use or dismiss what others tell him or her as feedback. There even used to be a thread where people were asking for feedback.
If there is a character I can't really handle with mine, I can also always ignore these posts.

This is an interesting point. I have seen that happening. You better be aware it is possible. We are all no supercool humans who never make mistakes, some are more used to this form of RP, others are not so familiar with it (yet). Also, I am not nearly involved enough with people ooc to know what is an alt and what is another person most of the time. Can you accept that a player may lose the fun in playing when she or he is feeling his or her character bullied around by an unidentifiable group? This can also drive players away.

There are a lot of conflicting characters I like because their writing is increasing my fun and motivation and some that I don't because I can't handle them. Nothing is perfect.

In all honesty this contradicts the non-dictating argument. For me it is the player's decision what she or he wants to be to have fun. I suck at playing jerks, and don't find fun in it, so I probably never will play one.

If this is the case than there's immense stuff happening behind the scenes that I have no idea about. I can't even imagine going to a mod with that. Calling a mod for a character nerf is not the good way, I understand that and I get that this can be considered bad style. In all honesty, I can't see any character on CDN that is out of line in power, ability, god-moding...

or do you mean:
have been drenched in complaints about players being “too good” at their job
?

That would be personal then. Also something that's not supposed to go to a mod right away in my opinion.
We are all (mostly) adult people here, so by all means, ooc communication and PM can clear the air or arrange new things.

Saying that, having no instant PM system is currently maybe a bit of a problem that could add to this complex since one has no means to contact a character that has no old PM. If one has no idea who the player is (and there are a lot of such characters) one only can go to the Mods or leave it be completely.
And before anyone says anything: I am in contact with Dippy and wish him a joyful off time! I know about the problems and admire what he does!

I loved CDN when I joined and I love it now.
Even if I play a nice character.

Just popping in to say that just because someone did it in the past does not mean it is okay.

Okay, so I wasn't going to say anything but I'm going to after that.

Mr_Sandman does not have to change his character to suit you. You don't get to dictate to the writer, who is a quite a nice guy out of character. And honestly, singling him out is exactly the behavior the mods are saying needs to stop happening.

As you might have noticed, people are actually speaking up in this thread. They are actually saying something. They hold actual opinions and are not going to put up with other people saying otherwise. Actual emotions and passions are apparent, and we've even got a few snarks here in there where it's opportunistic.

This is what the board is supposed to be like.

Yes. Yessssssss.

Now, to address a few specific points:


What I am saying is that characters should be willing to get their hands dirty for beliefs they purport to hold.


You are confusing "calm" for "polite". RTB is an ex-terrorist and straight-up murderer, no matter how collected he is. One can calmly dole out the harshness. One cannot politely do so.


1. What you think someone else's character should be like doesn't matter.
2. If you think consequences should come into play, then by all means talk with Sandman to brainstorm some interesting consequences. He's good people, and I know would be game to let the chips fall where they may.
3. When we've seen sustained "feedback" from a handful of players, then yes, it's bullying.


When have you been subtle? <3


This is a good point. We are not demanding that everyone drop what they're doing and play jerks. Not everyone wants to play a jerk, and that's cool. But everyone, jerks and non-jerks alike, have opinions and values and those are a great source of content and conflict. Use that. Even Harrad yelled at people.


Indeed. Times, rules, and expectations have changed.

Having been on the receiving end of this literally forever, I have to wonder if it's occurred to you that constantly feeling the need to 'check in' is pretty ridiculous in and of itself? If you have an established relationship that you're confident and comfortable in, you shouldn't need to double- and triple-check every time an IC insult is uttered just to make sure it's not actually an OOC thing. The fact that you feel this constant need is actually pretty telling, and is a *huge* part of why you've been called passive-aggressive, since it does nothing except give off the vibe that your instinct is to criticize and complain and moan and whine and bitch etc but you want to make sure nobody thinks you're actually doing what you're pretty clearly actually doing. It's a roleplaying board and that means that what happens on the board is roleplaying and should be taken as such. That is the established parameter, and constantly approaching someone OOC to make sure they're either not offending you on purpose or not taking things personally themselves is just a polite way to browbeat them, because every time you 'check in' you're basically telling them that you weren't comfortable with something in that interaction.


I miss our mutual loathing. <3

As I said it's a point of view. If someone makes a gaming experience miserable, some would say you just have to suck it and stop playing if you can't handle it, others that he should respect your game experience a little. I'm more of the second category.


You didn't read my whole post did you?


I wasn't dictating anything to anyone. I offered an opinion. We're writers, we're supposed to be able to handle feedback! Come on guys, when did we get so scared of someone telling us what they think of what we do?


I'll admit that, I needed an example to argue my point though. It's nothing against him, but he was the supposed victim of my bullying.


Fair enough.


No I don't. Polite doesn't mean someone has a good heart, just that they're civil. This thread was NEVER about characters be good or bad.

Ok, once again, for some people writing without accepting feedback is crazy. So for the record, what other people think of my characters matter, because I'm interested in perfecting my writing skills.
If you mean (I hope you do) that my opinion has no value as law or something, I never pretended otherwise and I'd like people to stop acting like I did. This was just an *opinion*. Again I dare you to pull the log where I order anyone to play a different way.

Ok you guys are using that word like it's nothing. Bullying is a serious offense, it's something I have an unfortunately close knowledge of, and I'm getting fucking tired of you using it as a god damn buzzword. So take it as someone who knows what that actually means, a bully does NOT ask if you're ok with the situation. If he does, he's not a bully, simple as that.
Bully is a terrible insult so please weight it before using it.


Hu, well then we're in total agreement! oO


I never considered that, but now that you point it out... No it's not. Making sure you're not upsetting someone is never ridiculous. Also I've done it like four of five times top since I've registered, so I wouldn't call it "constant" as much as "once in a while".


Yeaah, that's all happening in your head. Sorry.


Ok how does it even make sense? Making sure everyone's on the same page means you're really insulting them? What?
But hey you're right, it's crazy to make sure we're cool with someone ooc. After all this thread was made to celebrate how everyone is getting along ooc, isn't it?

To get back to the original subject of the thread, I'd like to point out that people who think the board needs more conflict need to post it. I'm sorry if this comes as a low blow, but most actors in this thread virtually never post, and there is enough people *asking* for more snark to actually provide more than enough. Harrad and Niamh, why not make alts for that? Espiza, Abad, Psycho Yoshi why not get back to actually posting stuff? You'll see that those characters you think can't stand an argument actually have some juice.

EDIT : Someone brought to my attention that this last part could come off as "Post more or shut up". That's not what I meant, there is nothing wrong with expressing concern with the state of affair. I just meant that the people complaining about that state are enough to actually change it, in this case by creating and/or playing more conflict building characters.

As the big bad evil mod, people have told me on no uncertain terms that they’ve left because of the enormous outcry of people who cannot, will not sustain an argument. Good writers have left because these same people tell them, out of character and in PMs, that they will not participate in arguments because their opponent is a big bad meanie pants who won’t ease up on his rhetoric. These same good writers complain that few people here are willing to play the devil’s advocate, and refuse point-blank to carry any conversation in threads that would have sustained pages upon pages of rhetoric a year ago.

Now that I am employed, working fifty hours a week, and being told the same thing, I completely agree.

Being one of the most prolific posters on this forum, and someone who has devoted days’ worth of time organizing games, animations and images for it, the bang is simply not worth the buck right now. As it is, I am trying to organize two separate story arcs to launch during the next week, but when I come back to a forum where I’m being informed that multiple people have to dumb down their posts to play, I don’t want to do it. I have to remind myself that the people I’m posting with are amazing writers that I would gladly wreak havoc with if people bothered to write three posts in response.

You want disenfranchised people to post here again? Then the onus is on you to be interesting.

Alright.. Just throwing my mostly inconsequential two cents in here.

4Eyes. I think the kind of conflict we need is less 'need more jerks' (though that's probably true) and more people need strong opinions. Just like all of us have strong opinions. And they need to hold to said opinions and not just have arguments peter out and end in 'oh well I guess I can see it that way'

Most people don't do that. You challenge their deeply held beliefs, whether it be religion, military actions, politics, or sports, and you're going to get someone with their heels dug in, fighting for three pages just to make the point. Even if they're normally perfectly reasonable people. You poke certain topics and you get a disproportionate response. In doing so, that's kind of what helps worldbuild. Not the only way, certainly, but by pulling stuff from different walks of life to make a point you flesh out the world around your character and that makes the argument and the characters involved, interesting and dynamic.

Instance; Hierarchy vs Separatist arguments. They got kind of old after awhile I suppose, but everyone stuck to their guns and seriously duked it out, and they created quite a lot of movement and excitement on the board, and pulled new information out on how the relationship between the two factions really was, and even some backstory and worldbuilding on both sides.

it was interesting. I think we could use more of that, though I certainly haven't been around enough to add to it.

And I apologize if this doesn't make sense. I'm a little out of practice at making coherent, easily readable thoughts at the moment.

EDIT: I feel kind of old.... I have no idea what a 'hugboxer' is seven supposed to be.

How about the "good writers" accept that some people find them annoying and don't want to play with them anymore? Again, not everyone likes the same things. Some people don't want their alts bombarded by every insult in the book every time they post, you've good to be tolerant of that. "Good writers" have to be too. Why is it so important for them that the people they target stay there and take it? They're not punching balls. You got to respect what people want from this forum.
To bring back the FPS example, some of us don't want to play with the guy who stalks you so he can kill you every time you spawn. You can't force people to play with that guy? The FPS stalker will have to either change his play style, or play with people like him.

In that case it means that the "good writers" need to get into shouting arguments with writers who actually want it, like you guys. Where were you during the asari debates? I even made a jab at the salarians at some point.
The "good writers" need to move on to other targets, *willing* targets.

I'm sorry but I'm still not buying the idea that people actually asked other people to be more stupid, partly because I've been accused of the same thing and it turned out to be fictional. I honestly think it's a bunch of misunderstandings, like people who were just asking less constant venom or maybe who were criticizing the character's overpoweredness. But I can't think of a member who would say "jeez, please force him to be less clever, it's unfair to me because I'm so dumb".


Now what if I told you that my post, and the posts of other "hugboxers" that you consider uninteresting, are actually interesting for some other people? I'm sorry for you CDN isn't a world of snark anymore, because obviously that's the playstyle you like. But I've lurked a lot on the old forums, and even if there was amazing stuff, I think I kind of prefer it now, atmosphere wise...
Sure we could use more members, but I think we're doing amazing considering we're running on a media that stopped months ago.

Anyway, I know that if I wanted more snark and jerkassery out there, I'd roll my sleeves and make it so...

I haven't been here as much as I used to be on account of a pile of RL, some of it good, some of it bad. I'm hoping that will change by mid-September but life has no guarantees. That's why until things change it's about all I can do to maintain Vindi, Trex and Raelon, and I'm not sure when or if I'll be able to do more with Quatra.

Regardless, when I first joined this forum, I did it for a reason. I saw the Taetrus threads going up and most players arguing in favour of the Hierarchy. I'd done some real-life study of insurgencies and figured it might be interesting to play the devil's advocate; and did in the form of a character with a strong moral compass that nevertheless (or more accurately, because of) led her down the path to being a wanted terrorist. Sicaria was an absolute joy to play, and even though her story arc's mostly completed, I still can't resist chiming in with her every now and then.

So if you're looking to create a character or wonder what to do with the char you have, ask yourself what this char believes in and why; who has the opposite point of view, who has the same point of view; how your char can fit into the galaxy's larger issues.

I talked a lot with Corvax OOCly because ICly, our characters were both physical representations of the other's worst fears and very close to being mirror images of one another. Our characters caused friction all the time and we as players loved it. But it did involve a bit of communication and understanding, to make roleplay mutally enjoyable.

I actually can't remember how many times I was asked if I was a separatist in real life. I'm not. I'm just playing a character convincingly.

It's not about being a jerk for the sake of being a dick. It's about your character holding strong convictions and expressing them. Give your characters reasons for their beliefs and make them passionate about them. This is the difference between using your character to belittle another player for no reason, and creating a character who would have reason to behave in a hostile manner towards another character, in which the players' personal beliefs don't factor in.

I couldn’t give a retarded weasel’s right asscheek if someone generated discourse on this site by being a warlike simpleton or the world’s greatest mother. If it got people discussing something with a strong conflict (read: made several threads people actively discussed), I would be all over that. Hell, I’d create another “nice” character (hint: I’ve had more than two) just to participate.

Whether or not you “buy into” the idea is immaterial, because we have to deal with it constantly behind the scenes. Old writers have left not because the forum’s gotten too nice, but because it has become one-dimensional. Good writers (again, see the definition above) are not going to post in a stifling environment where pages and pages of high-quality discourse are met with a yawn, an (OOC) “good job, X” and maybe a one-line post.

It will. Not. Happen.



Good for you. People better than I have made the decision that it’s not worth the effort.

I'm also going to add that Harrad and Vindi are about the nicest characters on the board, but that doesn't by default make them boring. "Nice" sometimes means being conflicted if your friends are up to something you find reprehensible (Sicaria). "Nice" sometimes means daring to voice your opinion in front of scary, heavily-armed people who disagree with you, like mercs and pirates. And Vindi, however nice she might be, has never bored me...and is my most-used characters now precisely because of the amount of RP she generates.

I want everyone to stop right now and read this sentence, and then read it again.

One more time.

This sentence is the distilled essence of everything we are arguing for. Everything. It is the reason we have lost very talented players in the past, and why things are dwindling now. Re-read that sentence yet again, tattoo it on your heart, and get posting.