Posts made by Arkandel

@tyche Call it what you want. I call it "MSB rules". Please adhere to them.

@wretched Sure, but I'm not talking leadership here, I'm talking popularity.

If you're great at it you can play a fail-at-life nobody so well that people will come and play with you. They, too, could play as seeing what a loser your character is but it won't matter; every time you're in a room it's entertaining. Every PrP with you in it is better, more memorable, more fun.

Even if everyone plays it well, stats can only do so much. Arguably that's a good thing.

@tyche said in I owe a lot of people some apologies.:

@wizz said in I owe a lot of people some apologies.:

I get a little tired of the dumb, brassy lynch mob attitude around here sometimes.

Toxic femininity.

What the hell man. Especially not in this forum section, not that it works in any. Come on.

@juke said in Unlikeable, incompetent, and inactive: Can these characters work in an MU?:

Ultimately I agree with @Arkandel and a couple of other people in this thread -- a character's success almost always boils down to execution and audience, and I think the common thread isn't so much what the character is like, as it is the OOC perception/feeling that the person who's playing them is interested in other people's characters and stories, and will invest the time and effort in raising other people's characters up, as much as they do their own.

Possibly not for this thread's scope but it's also why attributes like Charisma or Status don't work very well for MU*. A great player might be playing some baseborne peon yet that's gonna be a baseborne peon with a goddamn following before long, just because it's fun being around them... while Leaderman McStatus might struggle to find anyone to come to his party.

In my opinion and experience a good player can make just about any character type highly appealing.

Ungrateful welps!

I have made the change @Roz, whose sole responsibility this and all similar javascript issues now are, recommended.

As it was working for me even prior to this someone please test and thank me, not @Roz, if it works.

For starters I want to thank people for staying - more or less - constructive in an emotionally charged thread.

Full disclosure: it's not the kind of conversation I enjoy to read let alone participate in. It feels a lot like sifting through other people's laundry, going over how friendships fell apart and who's at fault. More than anything such threads are about events which are none of my business unless it somehow involves predatory behavior the kind of which is endemic to MU* - and if it is not I avoid them. People don't always like each other, sometimes they quite dislike one another.

The reason I got pulled into it is because in this case an MSB administrator was involved and there was a complaint. To be clear, it was not @surreality who sent it, but it meant I had to ask around to figure out what happened. I still don't think I have all the facts, both the kind I think are relevant and the ones I would very much like to continue classifying as none of my damn business.

Here is the thing: I am no one's judge. I didn't sign up to be one. I can be judgy - hell, this is still MSB and most of us are in some ways - but when it comes down to it how popular one is doesn't mean anything to me. MSB bandwagons come and go, the mood shifts fast and it feeds on popcorn and people's frustration. I don't, and will not, run this forum based on that.

I was part of a few chats since yesterday night when I came home to this thread. A phrase that's come up a few times was "... I've gotten messages from people who feel the same way...". Yes, that's how it works - no one who doesn't feel that way will message a person on the other side of an emotionally charged argument. The majority of folks don't even know what's happening (myself included up to 12 hours ago) nor care, other perhaps than to read through and judge everyone here on all sides. Fresh popcorn has always been our official smell, I'm afraid.

To the point: The relevant word I care about when it comes to administrators here is misconduct. That's it. We've been - quite intentionally - stripped of much authority in the content that's permitted on these forums. Punitive actions are rare and exercised in extreme cases, posts are similarly extremely rarely deleted, edited or censored.

The popularity - at any given time, since that shifts - of one of us here is not relevant. Some of you dislike me (fools!); that's fine. Adoration is not mandatory to participate in this community. If it gets to the point someone feels they can't coexist it's okay to not log on here, too.

So far I have asked around and did not find cause to believe misconduct took place. If you have something to say about that you can reach out, here or in PMs. That's not specific to Auspice, mind you; Ganymede and yes, myself are also up to scrutiny - and if you are wondering there's been a succession plan in place if it comes to it and the forum needs to change hands should I do something exceptionally wrong. None of us here are larger than the community's need, and if it comes to it it will fall back to its founder who can then decide what to do with it.

To summarize: I hope this does not sound like we're circling the wagons - it's not my intention. If it does, so be it. But if there are facts regarding an MSB administrator's actions - actions as administrators - then I very much want to know. If you don't like them, or their posts, then I probably don't, but you can reach out anyway.

Thank you.

@thenomain

@bobgoblin Not me. If I wanted a Diablo game on the go I could get it on the Switch. And it's not even Blizzard making it, they're contracting someone to do it.

D4 or bust.

@zombiegenesis said in Muxify broken?:

I had to allow scripts through chrome for it to work today.

It's possible that's the issue if the permissions were stored for the 'old' URL but not the 'new'.

If anyone is having issues though (I'll check in the morning from my mobile network) I'll look into it further. I just need more information on what the problem is, any error messages, etc.

@thenomain It works for me, Theno. I tested it when we switched to https and it did then too.

What problem are you seeing?

@tinuviel said in I owe a lot of people some apologies.:

Folks appear to have deduced the source of the initial misinformation that caused the behaviour that is being apologised for and have expressed their displeasure.

ETA: ELI5: Person got told things. Person did bad. Person said sorry. Other people found out who told person wrong things. Other people hate wrong-thing-teller now.

Emphasis mine. I trust you can see why I might be confused if that's the level of clarity here, right?

But let me read my PMs.

Can someone please explain what this thread is about in somewhat clear terms?

@faraday said in Historical settings:

@three-eyed-crow said in Historical settings:
For me it comes down to respecting your fellow players. This is why I prefer cooperative/consent-ish games.

Even in the most consent-based games I've played someone could say things without requiring consent. So for example if I'm throwing a knife at your PC you can say it didn't hit you; if I'm throwing N-bombs you can't say I never said it. And if you're offended on an OOC level consent won't mean much.

I mean sure, if your players are respectful on that same OOC level there is no issue, but that's a really big if.

On the other hand I do dislike creating rules around trying to stop jerks from doing jerk things; it tends to impact good players the most, and the bad ones will figure out a way around them. I'm kind of torn on this one.

Some of these are amazing!

http://www.pompeiana.org/Resources/Ancient/Graffiti from Pompeii.htm

The more things change...

@three-eyed-crow A poll is really the only way to find that out.

But I'd bet internet dollars 'most' of us don't have an opinion, and 'many' of us haven't even played on FATE so they wouldn't care.

Is this useful for roleplaying purposes?

https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2018/10/proposals-jasmine-guillory-how-write-consent/571768/

@faraday said in Historical settings:

But what would a regular old 1866 human even be like if racism or sexism didn't exist? Would females have been allowed to be regular soldiers in the Civil War? Would there even have been a Civil War without slavery and all its evils? It feels like going down a rabbit hole of dominoes hitting dominoes, and I no longer feel like I have a solid foundation on which to base my character. It's no longer historical; it's an uncanny valley of similar-but-not-quite-the-same parallels that I have a hard time wrapping my brain around.

That's a valid point. It's tricky to tackle because, like any other domino effect, any answers provided by staff would open the way for more questions.

Perhaps a catch-all statement made in advance if staff don't want to deal with certain themes? "We want to explore the Wild West era without focusing on racial tensions". Then the onus is on players to not be jerks and derail what the MU*'s goals are.

Obviously if staff do want a fully immersive environment then they absolutely can allow all that to be explored without artificial limitations in its scope or tropes.

@mietze said in Historical settings:

And not to get too deep here, but I can say as someone whose family is deep in the trenches of taking actions and making plans I never in my wildest dreams I'd ever have to take/make in my own fucking country to keep one if my children safe, I personally feel very uncomfortable with people cheapening the evil being done by people to people by dehumanizing the people doing the evil. Oh, that couldn't be people like us, only monsters do that.

The best answer I can give is that it depends on the kind of game you want to run, and the issues you'll get yourself into by foregoing distancing the fictional from real-world evils.

Sure, some people - historical figures even, ones you can easily plug into your game - were racist assholes of monumental proportions. They were pedophiles, serial rapists, murderers, torturers; you name it, it happened. And if you run in the right period those can be part of your MU*, too; do you want it to be? Do you want players triggered by it coming to complain (or leaving) over it? It's not a rhetorical question, it's a legitimate concept to run and with the right crowd it can be super interesting not despite the discomfort but because of it; think The Handmaid's Tale, that sort of thing.

But it's not for everyone. And for those potential staff teams giving their villains fangs or orcish faces makes it more palatable - similar themes with a smaller impact but easier to compartmentalize.