There would be no +whining if you let people use the rule books to make thier characters. So long as the +sheet is mechanically correct by the rules, let them play. If someone wants to make a walking direct fire platform for a character let them. Yet also let them suffer for not having the mental attributes to do other things.

If someone is going to min/max a character it is up to the ***ACTIVE*** rpstaff to make sure that the effects of the min are used as often as the max.

As for theme, that is a load of shit. Everyone has thier own views on it. Trying to force one person's view on another will not  change what we have now.

Agreed.


Well.  That's not entirely correct.  All things in moderation.  I have no problem forcing the themeatic view that in Shadowrun, for instance, there is a corporation called 'Saedur-Krupp'.  I don't think anyone here would dispute that point.

There is a difference between saying "If you look in the sourcebook you'll see a list of megacorporations." and "I think things should be like BladeRunner or Neuromancer."

If someone wants BladeRunner go to BladeRunner MUSH, if someone wants Neuromancer go to that MUSH. Leave that  out of Shadowrun, it does not belong. FASA and FanPro have provided more than enough theme in the sourcebooks over the years.

If someone must hold up a novel, use one of the 46 Shadowrun novels.

The two man rebellion here seems to be against the 10 page bg's that try desperately to justify why your character has the stats you want them to have that are legal for them to take according to the rules.  I think it's already been clarified several times that this will not be the case, that you just need to explain plausibly how you got where you are.  So, this being the case, what's the big deal?  Did the words 'one page' go in one ear and out the other?  In order for the argument to be continuing in this vein, it seems like they must have.

One page is one page too many!  We're being oppressed!  We're being oppressed!

-CM

As a matter of correcting the argument here, I'd like to state a few things that I guess I didn't think of, or forgot during my last post.

We're going to separate out the ideals from the actuality of things.  Ideas first, these are legitimate goods that everyone really holds, followed by what really happens.

Everyone should know all the rules by heart.
Most people know some of the rules, and usually just the common combat ones, and then there's a few experts in various fields, and often times entire sections of the book that not a single person knows for sure how they work, they can just stumble through them.

Everyone should be a good RPer.
It is a fact, that even people who have RPed for years and years and years, written backgrouns, sometimes even wonderful ones, tend to RP badly.  Sometimes its 3 word poses, and nothing else, sometimes its 20 paragraph poses (and nothing else).  It all depends, maybe the person just has no grasp of what the word interaction means, or that a MUX is a social environment, so just kicking it in a public place without RPing with anyone (completely ignoring them) is pretty futile and won't get them continued RP.

No one should TS, except on TS MUXs.
Totally not going to happen.  That'd be like asking no one to look at porn, or to stop masturbation, you've got hands and you've got access its going to happen.  You can't stop it, and MUXs have tried for years.  The cleanest place I ever went to had pretty stringent rules, if you were caught TSing you'd be sitebanned.   A huge amount of people TSed and a large portion of them utlized commands that can be written on oneself to make a pretty safe system of emits.  Anyways, the point is, you can't stop it, so live with it, and let those people have fun where ever they find themselves.

Backgrounds help you get in the mind of your character.
In actualilty what Backgrounds do is force someone to jump through a written requirement for no reason.  You can't test in any way, shape or form the ability of someone's connectedness to their character.  You can't judge it from their background, you don't know the person will not be a combat monster who kills the first person they see from that background.  All you can tell is they wrote something, and maybe something good.  But you go to any MUX right now, login, and sit down for even a couple of minutes (given other people on) in their chargen waiting room (the people waiting for background approval) and you read.  I guarentee you within those few minutes someone will complain.  Someone will prove in a few minutes more they likely don't know much about what they are doing, and further someone will note how long they've been MU*ing, how many of these they've done, and offer some sort of advice about how to bare the burden of BGs.  New and old, hate them, and some people think its a neat part of their character.  Well, the people who hate them aren't going to get in the mind of their characters, they are only going to put in just enough effort to get approved, they won't use it for their character once IC for the most part, and the people who DO use their BG will have written it even if it wasn't required.

Backgrounds have a chance to go away.
I'm all for BGs going away, I'm all for allowing anyone and everyone who wants to play the good game of Shadowrun to do so, and as long as they aren't rude OOCly, they are trying to learn to RP and they follow the rules of the system, they're good by me.  I regularly, on other MU*s have offered help to other people about their posing if I see a lot wrong.  On another MUX there was a German fellow who regularly didn't understand certain slang words, or just a certain syntax of words in English.  So, I would explain, as best I could, for as long as it took tilll he understood.  We'd regularly pause our RP (if it was just us) so we could figure out together what was being said.  Fantastic RPer, definitely worth the effort.  I've had friends who didn't RP so well when they started, so I offered how to make poses longer, how to make them more interesting, how to not make them too long, etc.  I am willing to take the time to help a newbie, and because of all these things I'm opposed to BGs.  I'm opposed to Houserules for the same reason, it makes the Newbie have to not only learn the MUX, theme, potentially the system of the game, but ALSO new rules.  Silly.  BGs, they have to not only come up with a well developed character, worry about how they will RP, but then ALSO write down as best they can about their character.  Even a page to the uninitiated on BGs can take weeks (if not longer).  But a paragraph that's well written, and interactive, that's a lot easier.  It is EASY to rp, it is hard to write stories, even short stories.  In addition, veteran RPers are for the most part good at RPing, and have developed a keen sense for how to write a BG (not to express their character mind you, but on how to get approved in the BG process), and once they hit the grid they show off their RP.  The BG doesn't help that, it just slows them down, and a speedier veteran can be an asset to newbies (in the ways I tend to help) and even other non-newbies (because of their good RP).  So any delay is not a delay for just that one person, which they are likely most concerned with, but also a delay in the benefit and/or learning experience the playing of the game will actually be.  Though, again, BGs aren't going anywhere, they are here to stay.

Sounds like you're pretty close to the mark, NES.

-CM

/signed

I still think requiring backgrounds prevents people on the dumb-as-a-post level from making it past chargen.  They're out there on the interweb, and they show up in the most unlikely places... I want to take all reasonable precautions for evading encounters with them.  I think one page of background is a reasonable precaution against those who have never read a book, let alone written a whole page of text.

The irony is killing me.

-CM

When you meet that dumb-as-a-post person, Tear, on grid, cause be assured they will make it there, they've made it in the past and they will continue to manage past the BG process regardless of the requirements.  You will meet them, and they will stand out assuredly, within a pose or two, which isn't too much to ask of the elite among us.  You have two choices to pull from when you do meet them, you can either A) Ignore them and leave the scene or B) Stay and help them if they are willing to receive.  I'm all for leaving in the dust any RPer who doesn't seek out help on their poses, who doesn't like hearing how they might improve, who doesn't reflect on their skill at writing and wants to improve.  Let those people suffer in the small circles of RP they will find themselves, and you likely won't have to deal with them very much in the future if you just leave them be and not interact with them too much.  Some people will like them, actually genuinely like them and their 'style' of RP.  You don't have to, you never have to like someone else's RP and you can leave them behind.  I always offer up suggestions, it used to be common MUX etiquette to not just +vote for someone, but also tell others one thing you liked about their RP and one thing you didn't.  Before that it was even more involved, people would sit around, sometimes for as long as they were RPing, and review the sceneage they had and check out what was going on how they liked the story progression and where they may wanna go in the future.  There was a lot more to RP the longer back I remember, and I try and incorporate that as much as possible these days.  Whether or not we have BGs, cause we will, it still does not destroy the fact that Newbies are not a source of badness to a MUX.  It is the Newbies that keep our population high, keep our RP fresh, and sometimes even teach us veterans a thing or two not only about the system of Shadowrun (with ingenius builds) but also about Roleplaying.

So, I surrender my defense against no Backgrounds, but I still disagree with them in wholeness except as a personal adventure in writing.  Games are supposed to be fun, supposed to be free, and easy to get into.  Not a chore.  If every video game made it so you had to play some really hard mini-game just to get to the start menu everytime you wanted to play, that game would get bad reviews and never get played.  Even if that mini-game was supposed to filter out those who would likely be able to play the game best or not.

I think you hit the nature of text-based community games on the head there with that last bit.

I can bash the A key all day, and I get no karma!

You obviously aren't TS'ing the right people.

-CM

Macros man! It's all about the macros!