When you tell potential players that they can't talk about being women or queer or trans or people of color, you are telling those people they aren't welcome.

A simple 'Be polite and kind to one another' covers not calling each others nazis or freaks.

So I actually played for the first time in over a year today. And it was fine. I have so much dust I have to shake off, but I'll get there.

Also, it was wonderful to pitch my weird concept, get instant support for it and make it on the grid in under a day. Which is basically the exact opposite of the last ten or so games I played before I stopped mushing for a very long time. No arbitrary hoops, no 'exactly the same thing you said, but rephrase it to the way I like to say it', no 'Well, you can play that if you want but....' side-eye.

It's almost like people are running a game they want other people to play or something. Revolutionary concept in MUSHing, that.

I am grateful for people's thoughts and not trying to be consciously uncharitable. What gives me pause about rules like 'no controversial topics mentioned ever' is my real world experience dealing with that idea and tabletop gamers specifically.

The majority is almost never encumbered by rules like that. Everybody else, however, can be.

I want to extend good faith and a strong welcoming vibe to everybody. But I don't want to do that at the expense of having some people think they have to hide or put up with low grade aggression and/or bigotry to make 'socially conservative' people comfortable.

If we're applying the living room, well, this MUSH will be the living room of a gay dude who isn't at all neutral on the idea of making that space welcoming for everybody of good will and good faith.

I'm a gay dude who plays dudes who are gay. Mainly because I don't want to be the kind of player who puts up bad stereotypes as characterization. I have tried playing straight characters, like 99 percent of FCs I like on comic book games, but within a few hours of making those characters, they get hit on hard, OOCly and ICly, by folks with female characters, usually with enough persistence and a creepy enough vibe that I just slide right out of there and find excuses not to log back in.

On the topic, yeah bi-erasure is kind of a thing, in this hobby. But I feel like we're a long, long way further down the road than we were when people were writing public screeds about how gay werewolves ruined their games. (That's right, there was butt stuff on your MU*, lady. I hope it still keeps you up at night.)

As a player, the only time I have a problem with app rejections is when they feel just arbitrary, rather than actually serving a purpose.

More than one MU I've been on has had a lot of 'unstated rules' about their applications that end up being endlessly frustrating. Stuff like, 'Hey, you compared your character's attributes to existing characters in the fiction that are literally used as attribute benchmarks IN THE FICTION, we don't allow that. And no, we didn't tell you that ahead of time. Rewrite everything.'

Or 'Um, I personally don't like character type X and think it's overdone. No, it's not on the banned or restricted list, I just feel like I need to make a stand on YOUR app, as opposed to anybody else's. And no we don't need to update the banned or restricted policies, I'm just talking to you.'

Or 'Your character is a little too political.' With 'political' being a euphemism for 'character type based on a group that makes me uncomfortable in real life'. In a modern game. (Note, I'm not talking about making a Nazi character here, just somebody who was a mutant rights activist, on a game about Marvel mutants.)

When the rejection makes sense and doesn't feel arbitrary, I'm fine with it. But with no offense intended to staffers out there, sometimes people get very, very micro-managerial about other people's creative process.

@mietze There was one. You might say it suffered a Fatality.

Nothing like some ball-battered shrimp, if you know what I mean.

And I'm not entirely sure I do.

10-15 years ago, this hobby had a problem with queer people.

Trans characters rarely, if ever, existed. Lesbians and bisexual women were usually played by very thirsty old men and gay or bi men were usually played as magical sparkle twinks by thirsty middle-aged women.

Queer characters played by actual queer players sometimes got some serious pushback for existing. I remember the 'my MU was invaded by gays!' complaints for a couple of different places, back in the day. And I remember my reaction was, 'Bitch, if you don't want queer guys, don't make a game based on a queer-friendly (for the time) show!'

These days, it's a hell of a lot better. I mean, there are still a lot of people who can't/won't get laid fetishizing queer people. But there are a lot of us playing people like us and not getting any flack for it. Which is nice. Other than the occasional bigoted 'But, but having visible gay people breaks immersion on my game about historical faeries and vampires', it's all good these days.

Eh, I just assume that everything I type on the Internet is being monitored by somebody, somewhere, sometime, even if it is some poor bastard at a data collection center getting called in for a manual check of my communications because as a gamer, I talk about stuff that no doubt makes several NSA algorithms twitch.

If I were truly worried about staff watching me digitally bump and grind, I'd just make sure to make it a more uncomfortable experience for them, than me.

"Okay, in this sandbox sex scene, we're going to be Cthulhoid merfolk, working our way through the Cephalopod Sutra. But I'm going to narrate in the voice of Bob Ross. Annnd go!"

Trade Wars 2002 with semi-automated systems for trade would make a hell of a fun MU. There was a lot of hidden depth in that silly old BBS door game about being a free trader.

Eh, I just assume that everything I type on the Internet is being monitored by somebody, somewhere, sometime, even if it is some poor bastard at a data collection center getting called in for a manual check of my communications because as a gamer, I talk about stuff that no doubt makes several NSA algorithms twitch.

If I were truly worried about staff watching me digitally bump and grind, I'd just make sure to make it a more uncomfortable experience for them, than me.

"Okay, in this sandbox sex scene, we're going to be Cthulhoid merfolk, working our way through the Cephalopod Sutra. But I'm going to narrate in the voice of Bob Ross. Annnd go!"

Honestly, nothing is more depressing to me than the thought I have to provide adults with a detailed guide on how not to be assholes to each other.

I am working on a MU right now and thus thinking on the nuts and bolts of running and playing on one. For me, OOC rooms are a very mixed bag, with a moderate slant towards the negative.

My go-to examples are with superhero games and the weird queen bee cliquishness of most OOC rooms, wherein somebody playing a female character (usually a highly sexualized one) decides she owns the room. Lots of flirting with the objects of the player's desire, lots of in-jokes and scene analysis, etc. New players, or players with characters that person doesn't want to type fuck are generally ignored or given fairly unsubtle hints to shut up around her majesty. It's especially jarring when the welcome channels are actually welcoming, but your first interactions with the players are not.

But beyond that, I remember back when Fallcoast had this guy (and my apologies if anyone reading this IS that guy) who would spend 24/7 in the OOC room talking about how his were-spider could and would kill and eat your character. You would log in with a new character, somebody would ask what you are making, and the dude would explain how his character was going to murder yours. Every time. For hours on end. With page references. Over the years, I made a dozen characters on that game and that dude was doing the same shtick all day, every day, forever. He's probably still there. And I watched it scare off a few new players.

I agree that OOC communication and a sense of community are a good thing, but I tend to find the idea of policing an OOC room for politeness and a general lack of predatory behavior (sexual and otherwise) distasteful and a little exhausting just to consider.

Honestly, I'm less worried about people oversharing and being nasty to one another because as was pointed out earlier, the best thing to do in a lot of those cases is to gently move folks to pages, their own channels or, if they can't help emotionally bleeding on others, moving them off the game entirely.

What I'm really trying to find a polite, neutral-sounding wording for at this point is 'don't be an OOC Room Asshole'. I have had ten minutes in the OOC room convince me I don't want to spend any time on that particular game at all. Admittedly, it's more common in my experience on superhero games, but it's happened elsewhere as well.

Something about the OOC room brings out the inner mean girl (regardless of player gender) in some players, which is, for reasons I've never really been clear on, tolerated by fellow players and staff.

I am grateful for people's thoughts and not trying to be consciously uncharitable. What gives me pause about rules like 'no controversial topics mentioned ever' is my real world experience dealing with that idea and tabletop gamers specifically.

The majority is almost never encumbered by rules like that. Everybody else, however, can be.

I want to extend good faith and a strong welcoming vibe to everybody. But I don't want to do that at the expense of having some people think they have to hide or put up with low grade aggression and/or bigotry to make 'socially conservative' people comfortable.

If we're applying the living room, well, this MUSH will be the living room of a gay dude who isn't at all neutral on the idea of making that space welcoming for everybody of good will and good faith.

When you tell potential players that they can't talk about being women or queer or trans or people of color, you are telling those people they aren't welcome.

A simple 'Be polite and kind to one another' covers not calling each others nazis or freaks.

@Auspice said in Legends of the Old Republic - In Progress Star Wars Game:

@Bad-at-Lurking said in Legends of the Old Republic - In Progress Star Wars Game:

I am already working on concepts. So far my favorite is a Jedi who isn't a terribly good Jedi (he's a little too fond of nice robes and comfortable suites at the Four Sectors), but he is a pretty good diplomat. He's also haunted by the nagging force ghost of his great-grandmother who was a great Jedi and wants him to do better.

"When I was your age, I'd already helped bring the pirates of the outer rim to justice!"

"Well, I was thinking of trying out that new Sullustian sushi place near Senate Plaza. That's a step in the right direction, I think."

I have your PB:

That's actually kind of brilliant. =D

I am already working on concepts. So far my favorite is a Jedi who isn't a terribly good Jedi (he's a little too fond of nice robes and comfortable suites at the Four Sectors), but he is a pretty good diplomat. He's also haunted by the nagging force ghost of his great-grandmother who was a great Jedi and wants him to do better.

"When I was your age, I'd already helped bring the pirates of the outer rim to justice!"

"Well, I was thinking of trying out that new Sullustian sushi place near Senate Plaza. That's a step in the right direction, I think."

I ... have to admit that I'm a bit hesitant about, um, arch-villaining my potential playerbase. If that was your point?

Wait, was that that your point?

@Auspice That's probably a better policy, all the way around!