Best posts made by Arkandel

Orville. It's everything Star Trek used to be, focusing on diplomacy and meeting weird races to solve convoluted diplomatic emergencies which reflect on real life issues... plus 12 year old boy humor.

He refuses to make time for the sexual event!

@tempest said in Regarding administration on MSB:

@ganymede Again, I did that because YOU are a fucking useless pile of shit as a mod and moved an entire thread to the hogpit.

Would you please take a look at the forum this thread is in now? I know you are pissed off but that's not an excuse. If you can't refrain from name calling then you will need to take a break either way.

@kanye-qwest said in Regarding administration on MSB:

If you just want to ban spammers and 4chan trolls, fine. No need to hammer anything out. If you want to be threatening longtime posters with nebulous "you'll be unwelcome", or make suggestions on content in the hog pit, you probably ought to have your story straight. Both for yourselves, and so people will know what to expect and whether or not they want to expect it.

Being a long-time poster means nothing. I have nothing personal against @Tempest - I like her just fine. I would ban her in a minute if she steps out of bounds far enough.

As for what to expect and what not... we have to use our judgment. If it's not consistent enough it's because we are not actually a hive mind (heh...), and we're making this shit up as we go along. The line - for me - is whether the discussion remains civil and attempts to be constructive; is it aiming to suggest ways things can improve, to point out things are not working, or is it just a full-on personal attack? The f-bombs are optional.

We should (and will, going forward) talk among ourselves more but... I will greatly appreciate if every time we do our jobs we didn't have someone playing the "oh you got a personal vendetta against me, personally" card. We are moderating, we will continue to moderate. You asked us to. You need to live with that.

As a sidenote, really... really, @Ganymede is one of the most straight forward, fair people I know. If you can count on nothing else you can definitely expect brutal honesty from the lawbot. There is no agenda here, what you see is what you get.

@Luna So you hate everyone except for the Swedes.

@krmbm said in Regarding administration on MSB:

Maybe I misunderstand the purpose of having a forum. I took a quick look for MSB's "stated purpose" and didn't find one, so I guess maybe I'm just being the ass for assuming the point is to give people a place to discuss stuff.

I didn't (mean to) imply you were an ass, I was simply debating the point you made - that the Hog Pit accounted for a large number of threads based on numbers, and whether those numbers inherently carry value or to what extent.

Again, that category isn't going anywhere. The rules we are rehashing don't even change how it's to behave. But having conversations about it can help determine how MSB should be best set up so that... well, let's say that what happens in the Hog Pit stays there. At least to whatever degree we can arrange.

Since you brought up MSB's overall purpose, as far as I'm concerned it's to give a neutral ground for the community. Games open and close, staff and players move on, burn out or come back, but a common point of reference can give us - as individuals or perhaps groups - a sense of belonging, or at least of continuity.

@Saulot said in Good TV:

Umbrella Academy is amazing. My view is likely biased since I never read the comics.

Yeah, I haven't read the comics either but I binge watched the crap out of that series.

And Number Five's actor is really fifteen iRL? That kid has acting chops.

@faraday said in Regarding administration on MSB:

Various people have said "Well if you don't like it, leave". Which maybe is the only answer here. But given how small the community is already, splintering it further doesn't seem like it really does us any favors. And frankly it's depressing that the response to "Can't we all just be civil to each other?" is, essentially, "No - so quit your whining or leave."

If I have a vision for MSB it's to not force anyone but the most abhorrent people in our community to make that choice.

But allow me to piggyback on your comment and bring up a counterpart to "if you don't like it leave" and that's "it's me or him/her", a tendency to throw ultimatums and make things personal and fixate on one word, one sentence, one microaggression and then escalate it into a vendetta. Entire pages of threads are turned toxic that way ("you suck!" "no YOU suck!") but that's not even my main issue.

It frustrates me to see people I know have done good in their respective areas turn on each other, sometimes for no other reason than they don't get along, and if I had to isolate the reason that bugs me as much as it does is that in our real, adult lives we all manage that on a daily basis. We have had to deal with coworkers, friends' friends, clients, bosses that we don't like so much and somehow we're making it work, so why can't we do that here?

I'd understand it on a game - you want to have fun, and so you can curate who you're playing with - but I see objectively good people dogpiled the shit out of by other good people, and it's really unfortunate.

I don't expect us to all get along. That'd be stupid and naive. But surely we can at least let things go like we theoretically do every damn day of our adult lives.

@Ghost There's a reason I spared that post

I quite agree with @Collective that there should be a discussion - somehow - between staff and players, although the exact mechanism of that (given that before a game opens you have no players per se) is tricky to establish. But the former need to be pretty firm about what their expectations and boundaries are.

Then it's also on the PCs to portray this properly. A racist character who looks uncomfortable around certain PCs, or a sexist character who grumbles and detests taking orders from a woman is a completely different beast than someone who goes out of their way to throw IC insults like they're going out of fashion, since that can trigger people without generating any actual RP, or worse... someone who tries to block RP venues based on their IC preconceptions. The latest in particular should be a no-no regardless of anything else.

***=I read an interview by the episode's director...***

@auspice That's one way to do it, too. Maybe make it part of the rules discrimination can only be directed at or affect NPCs, but not PCs.

Perhaps knowing the black guy is badass, and has badass friends, and you might be in combat with him at your back mitigates your IC views; that might limit these characteristics' footprint a bit, and avoid having venues blocked for PCs ("sorry, we don't accept your kind in our crew").

@Ghost said in Game of Thrones:

Man, I am such a Lena Headey fan. She's really brought out the character and is the perfect Cersei.

Watch Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. Man, I miss that show.

@thatguythere I mean this in the nicest way, I really do... but what are you doing here?

@Tinuviel I thought you wrote Reuters should respond appropriately to threats of violence, and I wondered if there was a scandal I missed.

My real issue with the Ramsey Bolton kind of characters isn't so much that they get to do bad things. Plenty of perfectly normal-looking good-guy-saying-the-right-things characters, both in their applications and on the grid, turn their kinks on or whatever in private.

My issue is that unlike novels or series where such characters get away with it for a variety of reasons - their thematic position allows them immunity, others consider the consequences of attacking them, etc - on MU* that doesn't happen. It's quite frequent (practically guaranteed, even) to see neonates standing up for that cute ghoul who's getting verbally attacked by the mean ol' Elder, or for peasants and minor nobles to stick their noses up at High Lords.

And when it comes to actual villains? To characters who in fact are IC obnoxious or get in the way? I've seen the occasional murder-party form, complete with OOC boasts about how they'd do it. Mind you, it doesn't actually happen often but for many players being the antagonist and seeing that kind of talk is discouraging on its own, which is why not many rear their disagreeable heads (or get to keep them for long).

***=One argument against your last point there. I think there may be more than we know - remember a certain dialogue which was cut short after which people went their own ways.***

@surreality I don't even mind that. IC hypocrisy, mob mentality and all that stuff is fair game. I'd actually love to see that kind of roleplay take place in a game even if my PC ended up getting torn to shreds.

What I do mind, very much so, is the OOC element in these things. And not even just the crossing of the IC/OOC line - the communicating of information, planning over pages, etc - which is bad enough on its own, but the animosity shown over public channels. The "I'm gonna kill him if he does anything!" kinds of empty boasts that really damage the collective gaming culture significantly, since they make this the norm.

@Ghost Hell, I don't even like picking up the phone if some barbarian actually calls me on it. Ugh. Just text or e-mail me like a normal person.

@deadculture I've zero issues with @Tempest, with whom I've played before.

I just don't want to spend all this time nitpicking minor stuff. I got dank memes to post.

No spoilers needed to say this: Bran can freakin' warg into a dragon at will. Or a person.

It's not clear but the guy is the most powerful person in Westeros and it's not even close.

@louis-manigault said in How should IC discrimination be handled?:

What handling is there needed, really?

Read this thread. There is no question handling these themes carefully is necessary since there are players who are affected by them; the question is only what kind and to what degree.

We play games where murder, betrayal, and torture are the norm, and we're going to get our knickers in a twist about the idea of someone having some prejudices IC, or making inappropriate remarks (by today's standards anyway)?

Yes, because very few of us have been murdered or tortured, but some of us have been victims of sexism, racism, etc. It's easy to say "don't take it personally" when it has been personal to someone for most of their lives.