Summer TH 2023 Breakout: IC Negativity
This topic didn't make the agenda. Discuss Here.

"For me, IC-based negativity is perfectly cool and par the course for the theme. Your character hates someone or something and wants to dump on them? Expected, though I do generally try to mix in bits of positivity about the actions, the taking of chances, the creativity, etc where I can if it's me doing it. What I'm talking about with 'staying at the low bar' is OOC-based negativity and low expectations filtering in from us as players into the world. Response to player-generated plots and actions which go along the lines of, 'that's cool, but don't expect that to happen often or much at all' but reworded and repackaged. Whether it's for singular big moments, longterm drawn out plots with lots of investment, etc. Whether these types of thoughts are shared to everyone or smaller groups. How can we rather than default, in some cases, to expecting less effort, enabling if not encouraging low expectations, to rather shifting towards where we uplift to higher expectations and creating more effort? Which I think can also pull some from other threads where people talk about wanting more than death-only resolutions or death-only conflicts."

I think it's a bad idea to discourage IC negativity or establish some sort of OOC stigma around it. It does not fit the theme. I'd even argue that there is too much positivity and happy-go-lucky attitude already.

And to be clear, my desire to post wasn't about anything staff had done or communicated ICly through puppets.

Being as vague as possible, in the spring I ran my own little plot. Any negative IC reaction to the plot didn't bother me, but what stuck with me was a comment where someone had said to a large audience, "Don't expect this as the norm." (but phrased differently)

And what I gathered from that was essentially OOC communication through IC means to not expect a good deal of chyen and effort into making a conflict, possible death plot that wasn't just show up and try the hit. And to try to steer people towards expecting far less effort and expect moreso just "you're going to die, probably with far less fanfare".

So for people who do show up and kill plots, this isn't a criticism of you and those at all. It's not my preferred style most of the time, but it's certainly themely and has a fit into the game. My main concern and the reason I asked for the topic was moreso addressed for the comment which tried to push down the idea, temper expectations on what people can put into effort wise and creativity wise. An opportunity to reflect on why would we as a playerbase at any time, any of us, want to communicate a sentiment of "expect less".

I think the comment stuck with me also because often times we can see on the boards where we reach for a coded solution rather than a culture solution. And I've been wrong at times where a coded solution does help. Yet even looking at implementations of items into the games that help with kidnapping, capturing people alive and releasin, I ask myself sometimes - has the implementation of those helped a great deal to increase those events? I think we've seen an uptick absolutely, but I don't know if we've seen as much as we all hoped. Sometimes when I mention something we should address as a culture change, I do get push back by people who say coded changes will solve the majority of the issue.

And I bring that specific portion up because it ties back into the OOC negativity/lower your expectations which seeps over into IC reactions sometimes, such as the one which spurred me in part to write it as a topic. I feel as players we should always be encouraging ourselves, whether personally or others, to keep up the effort put in and not treating it as an outlier and saying stuff like "Don't expect this to happen often." in terms of effort and length given for IC plots and attitude.

I hope that makes sense. Negative IC reactions to a plot I might run don't bother me, but I do hope so much better for all of us to not spread a message of "Don't expect this type of effort" essentially, which feels like OOC sentiment about what we all can be as players for those times when and if we want.

There's a way to properly set expectations, in particular when you're trying to pull something off, while also balancing not diving into a realm of telling people to keep low expectations of the efforts others will make.

An established character can hire/mentor a newer one to try and help them achieve their big goal.

For example. Bob wants to lease a club. Sue runs a club, so sue hires Bob to become a lanager so Bob can see what it's really like, wet his appetite, so to speak, maybe even be set up to succeed Sue as the club boss or something.