Gray Harbor Discussion

Lotherio

@Tinuviel said in Gray Harbor Discussion:

The problem with judging characters from the outside is that we often just don't know how deep their layers go. Often we see stereotypes or "the mentally ill one" because we're only seeing one layer. So it's up to staff to really keep an eye on shit like that, not us.

I can't say who is right or wrong; players or staff. That being players wanting to play other circumstance/condition/life choice/whatever other than how they currently live vs staff allowing vs too close to home vs seeing it too much vs bored with it as some element of a concept that must be included to make a character. Can't assume someone looking at said characters are only looking at one layer, they might be, but they may have more depth of view so can't just assume one way or the other. Same with person app'ing such a character, they could be using it as cornerstone 'this is how I'm different' or it could be the worked out the character history and some choices along the path of development lead to that inclusion.

My only thing was that we had a dogpile saying the staff was insensitive without really knowing why they felt too many were showing up too fast. The whole 'ban' part is temporary as far as I know. I don't know the why's of it all, other than we had a number of folks just taking on 'staff is insensitive' while being insensitive that there may be more depth to the decision then was on the surface. I was asking the dogpiling to reel it in a little.

As for PTSD, I was pointing out I'm over how often its used to help define a character, whether as a quirk or part of the defining elements of a character. I'm not going to ban any such players on my games, but I can sympathize with staff (who do this for their own fun as a hobby, not some obligation to let players do creative character development to educate themselves or learn/better understand other people/conditions/etc.).

And like @peasoupling , if eye patches aren't allowed and that's my jam, I'll shuffle over to the next game where I can get my pirate on. It doesn't bother me one way or the other. If there is some staff restriction on something I'm curious about, I don't see it being insensitive to my creative license so much as them trying to keep a handle on theme. I mean, they have nightmares and monsters of some sort and danger, for all I know staff just isn't comfortable killing a group of amputees that couldn't escape the latest monster vision dream thing just cause everyone wanted to play one (and honestly, that doesn't sound fun for me either if I were staff). Its their prerogative.

Ghost

@Sparks said in Gray Harbor Discussion:

@krmbm said in Gray Harbor Discussion:

@Goldfish said in Gray Harbor Discussion:

But did they have a wave of amputee apps and had to be like. STOP. All limbs now.

Yes.

I like Jim. He's very disarming.

Roz

I don't think this thread had any dogpiling. Or even real hostility. Staff did make some comments here about the reason for their actions, and I've mostly seen people just being like "Yikes, that just doesn't look great and makes me feel kind of uncomfortable." But it's not dogpiling to just have multiple people express that feeling (in remarkably civil fashion for MSB). I don't think I've seen anyone villifying the staff here.

Auspice

@Ghost said in Gray Harbor Discussion:

@Sparks said in Gray Harbor Discussion:

@krmbm said in Gray Harbor Discussion:

@Goldfish said in Gray Harbor Discussion:

But did they have a wave of amputee apps and had to be like. STOP. All limbs now.

Yes.

I like Jim. He's very disarming.

Jaime hand

You used the wrong twin.

Ghost

@Auspice I'm team Cersei. Well, team Lena.

Whats interesting about this thread, is that some of the same people who promote themselves as being sensitive to people's triggers regarding other players roleplaying disabilities are immediately assuming anti-disability bias on a request for "no more people apping in with the amputee flaw". I didn't see anyone ask if these two worldly approaches intersected, but then again if someone asked me if I was OOCly an amputee to justify RP or a staff decision regarding amputees, I'd tell them to mind their own business(if I felt like giving the polite version of telling them to pound sand).

ETA: (What I mean is, perhaps someone on staff is sensitive to this and it bothers them. In that case, who wins? Potentially triggered person who doesn't want amputation role played or player who wants to role play an amputee? Who has the right of way? Interesting rhetorical headspace, here.)

I think it was pretty straightforward. No one said that PCs couldn't end up amputees through role play, nor was it said that there was a bias against a particular disability. A trend was spotted regarding cgen of amputees, and staff/story direction didn't want to overload the story with too many characters with the same shtick.

There's an old writer's trick to use a different letter for each character name. GRRM didn't do this, but you may see a lot of stories where the first letter of a character's name isn't used twice. I think it's smart that this game isn't QUADRUPLING down on a sudden influx of apps involving amputees.

Then again, for all any of you know, these amputee characters may not be written by some player that's struggling with their amputation in RL and just wants to play a character they identify with. These characters could be played by straight-up German amputation/prosthetic porn fetishists.

So, I wouldn't use Gray Harbor Mush as ground zero for assuming some grand scale disability bias that will potentially turn into banning asians and gays. That's just...egregious.

Auspice

@Ghost said in Gray Harbor Discussion:

@Auspice I'm team Cersei. Well, team Lena.

Yes, but only one of them lost a limb. Follow the bouncing ball, Ghost. Gawd.

Ghost

@Auspice said in Gray Harbor Discussion:

@Ghost said in Gray Harbor Discussion:

@Auspice I'm team Cersei. Well, team Lena.

Yes, but only one of them lost a limb. Follow the bouncing ball, Ghost. Gawd.

Derp. Right. Jaime is an amputee.

On the other hand...

(EYYYYYyyyyyyseewhatIdidthere)

Lena played MaMa and MaMa amputated a guy's dick off with her teeth.

#AlwaysPayYourDebts

Lotherio

@Roz Fair enough, it was civil, not dogpiling. It was like one sided rhetoric continuing to build on the same side without any rhetorical counterpoints offered. It being insensitive had a fair point, I can sympathize and also see it being insensitive by some assumptions made on behalf of staff in the pile of one sided rhetoric that seemed to be gaining momentum.

Ghost

@Lotherio said in Gray Harbor Discussion:

rhetoric

Key word.

I agree with you, for the record. I see a lot of ramping up, speculation, and the building of an accusation with very little question or input from the policy-maker's point of view.

Tinuviel

@Ghost said in Gray Harbor Discussion:

very little question or input from the policy-maker's point of view.

Which makes it all the more damning!

conspiracy

Auspice

@Tinuviel said in Gray Harbor Discussion:

@Ghost said in Gray Harbor Discussion:

very little question or input from the policy-maker's point of view.

Which makes it all the more damning!

Pikachu clues

Ghost

@Tinuviel said in Gray Harbor Discussion:

@Ghost said in Gray Harbor Discussion:

very little question or input from the policy-maker's point of view.

Which makes it all the more damning!

Hah. SO SUSPICIOUS. I imagine GH staff is well aware that talking about this decision on MSB is way more dangerous than saying what they said and letting it stay that way. Barracuda infested waters, these be.

Everyone knows that there's a 98% probability that "Too many people at once were apping amputees, so we put a cap on it to avoid there being too many amputee characters" meant "Too many people at once were apping amputees, so we put a cap on it to avoid there being too many amputee characters"

But people gotta take it as...

"First you nix the amputees, then the blacks, then the gays..."

Way more entertaining with way more opportunities for platforming when you take it that way.

Snackness

Maybe they, like me, were taken aback that a temporary embargo on an overdone character concept was taken as WE HATE DISABLED PEOPLE!

Because let's be honest, the number of people who can actually play a disability respectfully and realistically is MUCH lower than those who use it as, as @Ghost noted, a schtick.

Tinuviel

@Ghost I mean my "damning" post was sarcastic.

Disability, queerness, whatever it is. If it's an apparently arbitrary thing to restrict, it's going to get commented on. It's more about the arbitrariness than the specific thing being restricted. Mostly.

Tinuviel

And to be fair, the whole "what next" argument isn't really as invalid as it might ordinarily be, given staff (or someone speaking as if they are staff) mentioned that they had restricted applications for British characters in the past. So there's two rather legitimate questions to ask, regarding this policy: What next? and How many of X is too many for staff?

Ghost

@Snackness said in Gray Harbor Discussion:

Maybe they, like me, were taken aback that a temporary embargo on an overdone character concept was taken as WE HATE DISABLED PEOPLE!

Because let's be honest, the number of people who can actually play a disability respectfully and realistically is MUCH lower than those who use it as, as @Ghost noted, a schtick.

I think the general assumption of people being shitty is somewhat telling of some of these mentalities, to be honest. People are very willing to suddenly believe that everyone is bigoted or ugly before asking for clarification. It says a lot about the latent amount of respect and trust people have in others.

@Tinuviel I was being sarcastic, too. I getcha. Of course it's gonna be commented on. I was just jawing on the 0 to BIGOT in 60 seconds factor.

Tinuviel

@Ghost said in Gray Harbor Discussion:

I was just jawing on the 0 to BIGOT in 60 seconds factor.

Which, I mean... makes sense. WIthout clarification, it does come across as a bigoted thing to do. I asked on this board a while ago if not allowing trans characters would make me a bigot. The answer here was a resounding yes, even though the sensible answer is no.

Ghost

@Tinuviel said in Gray Harbor Discussion:

And to be fair, the whole "what next" argument isn't really as invalid as it might ordinarily be, given staff (or someone speaking as if they are staff) mentioned that they had restricted applications for British characters in the past. So there's two rather legitimate questions to ask, regarding this policy: What next? and How many of X is too many for staff?

I think this is a good approach, here; at least a better one than assuming bigotry. To be fair, they said there was an influx of amputee apps, so by that alone it was a decision based on census rather than bigotry. It seemed pretty clean, to me.

You and I know there could be reasonable cause to limit specific character types. Not a lot of trans people were in the WW1 trenches, for example, or a Sengoku Era Samurai game probably wouldn't have a large population of anything other than Asian characters.

It's always polite to ask, but I think sometimes that quick jump to bigotry borders on being nearly as rude as the offense one claims was being made.

ETA: In the end (it doesn't even matter) policy decisions that are truly bigoted are the ones that start with "Because I don't like..." Bigotry is an intolerance of those with opinions other than your own, which could very easily be twisted into a bigoted person claiming someone else is bigoted based on the oyher person's refusal to capitulate to their own opinions. It's a slope. A slippery slope. Still, "we don't want too many of this particular concept" is objective. One can choose to believe it's because of a dislike of amputees (in this example), but that's really just a conspiracy theory that is refusing to believe the reasons staff gave are a lie. That's very hard to prove, and often people take the "prove youre not a bigot by doing what I want" approach.

Tinuviel

@Ghost said in Gray Harbor Discussion:

they said there was an influx of amputee apps, so by that alone it was a decision based on census rather than bigotry. It seemed pretty clean, to me.

Depending on how one defines 'influx'.

Still, I don't actually care about the answers to any of the questions I've raised from this stafferly bunch. They're not my cup of tea. But still, if one cannot understand how 'temporarily restricting' a minority group is going to come across as bigotry of some kind, I really don't trust their judgement.

Ghost

Sidebar? My mental television is playing this scenario where one player makes a peddler of German amputee/proesthetic porn, and then suddenly 10+ characters app in as being amputees. Then, staff goes "HOLY FUCK, PEOPLE, STOP. ENOUGH." and then people are like "Y U HAET AMPUTEES???"

Like, would that be kink shaming, protecting a minority, or bigotry against amputees? SOMEONE CALL KENNY LOGGINS, CUZ WE'RE IN THE DANGER ZONE.

(I agree with your brainmeats and the thought process by the way. I think it all comes down to philosophy and honest intent. The sell is often based in the packaging and the salesman. Ban on amputees is far more socially dangerous than a temporary restriction on former pro wrestlers given the current social climate of both mushing and the world alone.)