Carnival Row

[Pyrephox]

My cynical suspicion, after Arx, is that I'd give it three months before the Chancellor's daughter is married to the head of the Black Raven in a huge public ceremony attended with pride by the city's finest humans, and several of the pixie prostitutes are given mansions in the Square by their human True Loves.

[Runescryer]

@The-Sands I understand that the proposal regarding speech OOC is more 'on-hands' than many people prefer, but IMO, there needs to be a set of hard limits when it comes to a game where, by the nature of it's theme, people can come in and start gaslighting, as we've seen before.

If the OOC restrictions become too much of an issue, an 'anything goes' com channel can always be added.

[Arkandel]

@Pyrephox said in Carnival Row:

My cynical suspicion, after Arx, is that I'd give it three months before the Chancellor's daughter is married to the head of the Black Raven in a huge public ceremony attended with pride by the city's finest humans, and several of the pixie prostitutes are given mansions in the Square by their human True Loves.

I give it two weeks before enlightened, liberal humans are openly advocating for full pixie civil rights in front of the entire governing body.

[Ghost]

@The-Sands said in Carnival Row:

@Ghost said in Carnival Row:

People are more keen to roleplay oppressed characters so long as it's not left to the players to be the ones who are plying said racism/oppression.

So are you going to say that no one can play a human? Because those (in general) are the one's plying the racism/oppression. That seems like it would immediately cut out anyone wanting to be in the 'constable' faction (since I can't recall seeing any non-humans among their ranks). Are you saying that all humans PCs must be enlightened and view the non-humans as equal?

I'm not saying that at all. 1) It's not my game and 2) I'm not making the decisions on this one.

It was in response to a few statements about how the problem would be fixed by focusing all of the racism/classism onto NPCs controlled by staff, which are still often controlled by people who play PCs, so it gets blurry there.

My own personal views are that if the setting includes racism and racist characters against "fae" characters, then people should be allowed to make them and have everything dealt with and handled ICly, up to and including PVP dice-rolled curbstompings of racist assholes...because that's what happens on the show.

A player should be able to play "racist constable #2" and oocly be "oh man, this is challenging to write! I love you guys!" but still in character be like: "Fuck you and your critch cunny. If it wouldn't anger me mates that dabble in critch-c*nt I'd beat you with this club." and then later: "STOOOP, you can't do this to me! I'm an officer of the laaaaaa-CRACK-DEAD!"

But that's just me.

[Snackness]

@Pyrephox My cynical suspicion is wall to wall fairy sex.

[Ganymede]

@Snackness said in Carnival Row:

My cynical suspicion is wall to wall fairy sex.

But no one plays Changeling: the Dreaming any more, seriously.

[Runescryer]

@Arkandel Yeah, that's going to take a fairly strong 'Storyteller' hand on the part of Staff to maintain the theme. Like 'mysterious' robberies, vandalisms, and physical attacks on the enlightened PC's and their property. Also, social ostracism by NPC's.

However, then you run into the problem of attracting players that want to run a 'KKK' faction to do all that stuff....

[The Sands]

@Ghost Yeah. I realized after @Sunny's post that I just misunderstood what you were saying.

[Auspice]

@Snackness said in Carnival Row:

@Pyrephox My cynical suspicion is wall to wall fairy sex.

To the window to the wall
'til the glitter drop down my....

[Alamias]

@Auspice

[mietze]

I think the brothel bit would not cause most people to bat an eye. I do not know that I've ever seen a WoD place without at least one wink wink strip club or prostitution ring because there are a ahitload of people that love playing prostitutes and strippers. Unless they are outright banned, prostitutes either street level or courtesan concepts are very popular characters to make in almost every theme I have played.

Are there players that freak out about it even in places where they are allowed, yes. Are there cringeworthy PCs sometimes, oh hell yes.

But I dont think that brothel setting play will have trouble attracting players who will make PCs for it, and most of the time (despite the side eye) there is a lot more things going on than sex scenes.

[Killer Klown]

@Lisse24 said in Carnival Row:

@Ghost I have not seen the TV show so I may be misinterpreting your post, but it seems like you solve these issues by focusing on the fae characters. So it is not another PC that is oppressing yours or acting racist and no one has any excuse to allow that to bleed OOC.

On the contrary, it would be you and a group of your friends fighting the machine, which, if you take a glance at my past characters has always been a concept that's interested me.

One of the subplot points in the show is a fae inserting himself into (heh. Inserting himself into...) the upper class human society; and there are other examples of not just the friction between the classes, but what happens when one side or the other crosses that boundary.

Still, I don't think this will work as a MU. It's entirely too character-centric. It's the sort of story where just about everyone who gets named onscreen has some - secret or not - connection to everyone else who gets named on screen; and much of the story is tied up or at least ancillary to their specific interactions and relationships. In my experience that doesn't really work when it comes to game plots.

[Ganymede]

@mietze said in Carnival Row:

But I dont think that brothel setting play will have trouble attracting players who will make PCs for it, and most of the time (despite the side eye) there is a lot more things going on than sex scenes.

I love brothels.

Err, online.

[surreality]

@Ghost said in Carnival Row:

if you're shooting for making this accurate to the show's setting and feel, it would definitely scrape plenty of no-go points with mushers.

Unless a vocal minority of posters now speak for all of us, this is not the case. It's far from being universal.

I'm not willing to give them that power to control what other people can or can't do by treating them as though they're the whole of the hobby.

[Derp]

@Ghost said in Carnival Row:

There's a lot of "Racism isn't fun, oppression isnt fun, I want my game experience to be fun", and I dont think that you can have Carnival Row be Carnival Row without some of these elements.

Then they can play in a different game in a different setting where those elements don't exist. Why would they be interested in this setting in the first place if they find those things so offensive? It seems like they'd be put off by the IP in general.

Protip: If you want to have fun on a game where there are elements that you find distasteful, don't play on that game, or learn to ignore those elements. It's very unlikely that the entirety of the game is going to change to suit your social mores.

[Arkandel]

@Derp said in Carnival Row:

@Ghost said in Carnival Row:

There's a lot of "Racism isn't fun, oppression isnt fun, I want my game experience to be fun", and I dont think that you can have Carnival Row be Carnival Row without some of these elements.

Then they can play in a different game in a different setting where those elements don't exist. Why would they be interested in this setting in the first place if they find those things so offensive? It seems like they'd be put off by the IP in general.

Protip: If you want to have fun on a game where there are elements that you find distasteful, don't play on that game, or learn to ignore those elements. It's very unlikely that the entirety of the game is going to change to suit your social mores.

I completely agree.

And look, I get it. People directly, personally affected by discrimination can be triggered or made uncomfortable even by 'fantasy' variations of such themes.

But that doesn't mean games including them should not exist. It does mean staff need to ensure it doesn't get too far, to the point of glorifying those thematic elements or even letting them leak on the OOC level, but we can/should not apply modern-day liberal values to every aspect of every MU*. The struggle against unjust authority, dealing with propaganda, being the underdog often depend on the existence of such elements.

And they indeed are not for everyone. That's okay.

I personally wouldn't want to play on Carnival Row where pixie and humans are happily united against a greater threat. That's not the fucking point. Theme might eventually get there in season 3 for the show or after a certain point due to RP on a game, but that's a separate conversation - and essentially a different game.

[Derp]

@Arkandel said in Carnival Row:

Theme might eventually get there in season 3 for the show or after a certain point due to RP on a game, but that's a separate conversation - and essentially a different game.

I think the problem is that too many people expect to say one thing, or have one scene, and suddenly a GRAND REVELATION happens and everything changes, social progress is made, tada.

And if it doesn't they get the fires of their rage fueled and start talking about OOC biases and whatnot, until it becomes a wholly different problem. And then what do you do? Show them the door and wait for the ranting about how there's discrimination and everyone is a bigot? Or give it and change the theme of your entire game to suit them?

[Arkandel]

@Derp "This +job is to use my connections into the printing press industry for propaganda. Jane, my character's girlfriend, will also assist me with her points in Finances to bribe the right people. The goal is to fix relations between humans and pixies. Also I'll run a birthday party PrP in which I'll deliver a two-pose speech as a fundraiser for awareness."

[Runescryer]

@Arkandel And, as I mentioned before, the ramifications for those could be...

-Any print shop used to make the propaganda burns down. No print shop wants to work with the PC, now
-As word gets around that the girlfriend is a vocal 'critch lover', the financial connections start drying up or no longer responding to her requests
-Vandalism of the character's house (rocks & bricks thrown through windows; nasty, flaming bags of manure flung) while the speech/fundraiser is going on. Or it's only PC's that attend the event; no NPC's attend, so the PC is only 'preaching to the choir' and won't change any minds.

Now, the point isn't to discourage PC's from trying to change the status quo, but to show that the status quo won't be changed so easily. Societal advancements can occur, but they'll be small victories; sometimes Pyrrhic ones, and always requiring sacrifices. You won't get voting rights for fae, but maybe you can overturn a curfew proclamation that only applies to the fae.

[bored]

Haven't watched the show (though it's on the list of interesting things, ah Peak TV over-saturation).

Nonetheless, this level of knowledge qualifies me to declare that "racist fairy brothel" is basically guaranteed to sell like hot cakes as a game concept, as much because the players who like to engage with those themes do it for the exploration of the oppressive angles, dark side of tings, etc etc. It's part of the kink. Very likely, your biggest problem will be the fact that the average brothel doesn't have 40 employees and you may have to start telling people 'sorry, we full up on hos' and then the fairy fights start and you've got glitter everywhere.

More seriously, you'll probably have trouble sustaining it in the long term since it seems like a very social-oriented game. The WoD/Changeling/etc folks tend to sort of be trained toward 'do research to defeat the world-ending whosist' as their major mode of play, so a game that's just about social drama and struggles could be tricky?

Best of luck.