@thenomain "Bad things, such as murder, regularly happen on games so why limit some but not others?" versus "Certain bad things trigger players on a personal basis so they shouldn't occur, or emphasis shouldn't be on them, on games since they're played for fun".
@faraday said in How should IC discrimination be handled?:
@arkandel said in How should IC discrimination be handled?:
There is no question handling these themes carefully is necessary
In truth, though, there are many themes that have the potential to upset or offend someone. IC -ism and sexual assault are the two we point to all the time, but that's by no means an exhaustive list. Someone who had to deal with a loved one with a particular mental illness may be sensitive to depictions of that (e.g. suicide but that's not the only example).
Absolutely. I'm not trying to pre-emptively decide that action needs to be taken either way, only that we consider the question and see if adjustments are actually possible.
In fact I've left games over pretty much exactly what you mention here. A year or two ago TJ was putting together a nWoD game (again 
) and he invited me to a Skype channel where we were chatting about theme, and when the question of horror came up one example that came up was a PrP based around a woman miscarrying a child. Someone put up a lot of objections about how might trigger people, and that we shouldn't permit that kind of plot to be ran, which ultimately led me to decide to not be part of that process.
Anyway, the discussion is still beneficial. I believe it's important to have it so we can figure out - among other things - whether there's a sweet spot for compromise between the two points of view.
@louis-manigault said in How should IC discrimination be handled?:
@apos said in How should IC discrimination be handled?:
@louis-manigault Nah that's being hypocritical cause you don't wanna use the word 'offended', since you associate that with snowflakes. Being irritated or annoyed or angry -is- being offended, it counts. It's not all clutching pearls while a monocle drops into a tea cup in horror, man.
Please tell me more about how I feel, since you're such an authority on the matter.
This is the constructive section. Please behave or leave.
@louis-manigault said in How should IC discrimination be handled?:
The expectation that the world conforms to you is one of the most puerile, self-centered, childish outlooks one can have. These people need to grow up and get over themselves.
We don't all deal with things the same way. Expecting that, and showing little or no willingness to see other people's point of view, gives them very little reason to care about your own.
@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.
@surreality I see it less of a risk when someone hands you a free car, and more... well, let's say you want to play a homeless person because it's an integral part of the character as he/she starts out, and in the first scene you have a random stranger goes "hey, you can come stay with me! I'm hardly home as it is, and the fridge is always full! No strings attached!"
If your PC has no reason to doubt the 'no strings attached' clause then there goes the concept, unless you specifically made them around the idea of not accepting freebies.
@peasoupling said in How should IC discrimination be handled?:
See also: you chargen a poor struggling character who finds herself having to resort to shady work to make ends meet, and within five minutes of hitting the grid some slumming billionaire is throwing wads of cash at you and buying you a gold-plated scooter.
I think that's a separate issue; game-wide resource (mis)management.
Money is meaningless if there's an infinite amount of it because giving it away doesn't detract from your reserves, and because past very specific mostly cosmetic things they can't buy you anything useful (not even love).
@tek The weather is turning on us 
Winter is coming.
@sg said in General Video Game Thread:
@faceless I'll keep my eyes peeled, then. Canadian game prices are nuts the last few years.
Gotta love our "sales", too. BLACK FRIDAY, MASSIVE SALE, 15% off.
@thenomain said in How should IC discrimination be handled?:
Which brings up the dangerous question: What forms of discrimination are not valid?
Although that's a good question, to me it's at least of equal if not great importance to be clear about its application in terms of its impact on the game's intended theme.
For example let's say you have a Far West game. The setting is supposed to showcase certain discriminating themes (racism, sexism, etc) but every player you run into plays a liberal character yet NPCs stay on the age-appropriate side of the political fence.
There comes a point where, unless staff takes exceptional efforts to inject theme with regular doses of the aforementioned -isms, the NPCs' views won't make an impact; PC-to-PC interactions vastly outnumber every other, and if most characters' superiors and employers are typically tolerant and progressive then the game can easily end up in this bipolar state where something is supposed to be happening, people IC refer to it happening but aside from the occasional PrP no one actually experiences it.
Yet stories are about telling, not showing.
It was... busy yesterday, to say the least, at the Eaton Centre which is one of Toronto's largest malls downtown, in the weeks leading up to Christmas, right after they had put up a gigantic (and well publicized) tree in it.
And yet I could see parents trying to seal up portions of it to take mid-range pictures of their kids with their brand new point-and-shoot non-smartphone cameras and getting annoyed because random people wanted to, you know, walk around as well. Dude - this was only dads, it seems - this isn't your personal playground. Notice the thousands of people around?
@apos said in How should IC discrimination be handled?:
Here, let's give another example. Old West storyline. A black PC goes for a job as a deputy, do you punish the sheriff for saying no?
In my experience (not for this particular example but more overall) the Sheriff would be given the, ahem, rope to hang himself with. He may say no and face the OOC windfall for it, or say yes and face the OOC windfall for it.
The real question for me is what is staff's role in this? Are they supposed to give him direction ("the general NPC populace would respond badly if the deputy was hired") or back his decision either way (such as run events with negative reactions, angry mobs, aggressive local merchants trying to strike back if he does make the new hire, for example) versus shielding the player from trying to OOC paint them as a racist?
@apos said in How should IC discrimination be handled?:
Other PCs think that the reason it's not a slap on the wrist is due to homophobia, and want the Sheriff to sweep it under the rug. What should he do?
Opinions on what the Sheriff should do may vary, and for good reason.
What I want to see is the Sheriff's player not being forced into an IC action due to OOC reasons, such as reactions by other players. Especially if staff doesn't give him a direction and leaves the player to face the backlash.
@collective What happens when the "Oh okay" is more costly by design?
"Hey, your character is borderline racist but he's my black character's boss, so that's affecting my IC career progression within the faction. Can we not do that?"
"But that would require me to change my character in a fundamental way."
At this point is it the first player's issue for rolling a character on a game like that? Is it the second player's issue for rolling that kind of character? Is it staff's for allowing it to happen?
What's the resolution for it once it hits the fan? What's the best way to prevent it from getting that far assuming you want to have a 'realistic' setting?
I like this article's analysis of the main difference between how Marvel and DC cinematic universes work.
https://www.theringer.com/movies/2017/11/30/16716006/marvel-cinematic-universe-in-2017
@sunny said in How should IC discrimination be handled?:
That's one of the benefits of having the discussion. If we never do then the perspectives are never challenged, and we can only get so far from an echoing chamber of talking to people who already agree with our viewpoints 100%.
I disagree. The point of having a discussion is absolutely to examine differing viewpoints and the like, but complete misrepresentation of a point makes it impossible to actually talk. If I say 'I like it when it's warm' and someone responds to it with 'well, I think sunsets and sunrises are just as pretty as a summer blue sky', that's not a discussion.
Controversial topics, by nature, are divisive. I can see why people with strong enough opinions either way could respond in a knee-jerk fashion and reduce others' opinions they disagree with down to easily dismissed strawman arguments.
Obviously it's not fun when it happens to (generic) you. But it still beats the alternative of only talking about them with those we already know will agree with us in the first place. It's not perfect but it's what we got.
@sunny said in How should IC discrimination be handled?:
Good luck. It's hard to have a discussion when one of the perspectives involved is continually grossly misinterpreted because people are threatened by the very EXISTENCE of an opposing viewpoint.
That's one of the benefits of having the discussion. If we never do then the perspectives are never challenged, and we can only get so far from an echoing chamber of talking to people who already agree with our viewpoints 100%.
@bored said in How should IC discrimination be handled?:
But I've also seen plenty of people latch onto the fantasy versions to a degree that was intense and obsessive, which saw them cross into OOC nastiness vs. those players, and which probably (and in one case not even probably, I know it for a fact) related to RL views.
I chalk this up to players not being able to properly separate IC from OOC very well, which is a way more widespread issue. It happens everywhere, too, across the board and on nearly every game I've even seen. Even where there's no real 'race' per se or mindset for someone to use when picking a faction.
You even see it in Horde versus Alliance on WoW, like there's a kind of player who chooses one over the other. It's how we are... tribal creatures who need a 'them' so there can be an 'us' we then get to be part of.
So if someone's bitching about them asshole halfies or whatever it is... that's on them. I can't honestly say it's the game's fault for having a freakin' halfling race. If they had werewolves instead it'd be them asshole furries or them asshole bloodsuckers or whatever the hell. If you want to stick a label on others badly enough you'll figure out what to write on it.
@collective said in How should IC discrimination be handled?:
Here's the thing: Why is it hurtful to suggest that it's hurtful to use that kind of language and bring those situations into play? Why is calling a gay player's gay character a fag okay, but saying 'I have to wonder why you want the right to call somebody a fag' not okay?
It's not. This debate - no debate - can be had if we can't disagree, or even just argue, without worrying someone will have their feelings hurt.
We need to have both of these conversations. Is it (and when is it) okay to discriminate IC, and is it possible someone might be upset at the idea OOC?
We won't get an answer. There's no answer. It's not like someone's going to put an idea here that will make everyone go "WOAH I never thought of that. It fits all games, it addresses everyone's concerns and we can just run with it now". Different MU* will need to do their thing after weighing the pros and cons, same as with... a lot of other issues games need to pick their poison on.
But we still need to have the conversation.
@pyrephox said in How should IC discrimination be handled?:
I like Arx; it's a second world fantasy game that has chosen to make a very egalitarian society, and that's a lot of fun to play. But if Arx was a game set in Meiji-era Japan, even Meiji-era Japan with magic, then I would want and expect to see some level of the cultural inequalities that existed then as play elements.
I agree with the distinction, but I also think it doesn't really answer the issue here. Obviously (?) fantasy games can dodge IC discrimination by essentially masking it behind IC concepts that don't have a direct equivalence in the real word; mountain savages, Drow, vampiric monsters or whatever are they can hated freely. Similarly Hollywood-izations of historic settings can 'fix' the past in basically the same way, by turning them into a fantasy version of their origins.
But when is the actual real world situation appropriate for a game? Never? Always? Only for a select audience? What's the best way for staff to implement these things if they try to go for realism? What are some policies they can use when players start being assholes? What are things they should be on the lookout for? How do they handle a case where a player ends up feeling bad because of the situations depicted on their grid anyway?
Those are questions I'm curious to see takes on.
