Posts made by Arkandel

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 will preface this conversation by pointing out it's in the Constructive section of the forum. Please be considerate since some parts of it might become controversial.

I'm wondering what the consensus in the community in general is when it comes to playing flawed characters like that with moral hangups in even more significant moral areas as long as it fit the setting.

For instance would you feel about a vaguely racist characters belong on a MUSH set at a time slavery was still legal? Would you find it appropriate (or how inappropriate) for a Victorian age PC to use a slur against Chinese NPCs? How about sexism if the game is set in the fifties("you mean a woman is in charge of your team?!"). How about playing homophobes?

Do characters like that have a place at all? Is it the responsibility of game runners to tweak their settings so all of the above is simply out of place IC? Are they doable as long as the players are considerate and don't simply use their characters as an excuse to drop n-bombs everywhere? Or should the very archetype never be played, period, since it can trigger people who've faced discrimination in their real lives?

What's the best way to handle this sensitive matter?

@ganymede Not to address the gays part, but the one thing I've noticed in a very limited number of scenes I've done so far. So I'm playing a guy who's both religious and superstitious - which as you can expect, when there are monsters to eat people's faces, he sees as a confirmation of the things he's always believed.

And it's funny because sometimes others looked at him strange for it... like it was weird to be such beliefs - as a sailor. Come on, those are the most superstious people on earth, especially during the time period.

Just a minor peeve, and nothing that's up to staff, but it bears bringing up. We all tend to be a very liberal, enlightened bunch when it comes to our characters, too.

To disagree with @derp, and not because of the 80s angle...

It's a very long held myth that the setting itself, barring extreme examples ("we'll set this game in 1950s Iran") bears nearly as much importance to WoD as how it's executed. Again and again we've seen threads trying to nitpick which cities and exact timeframes, only for yet another generic sandbox-by-night variation to come out of the gates.

A robust political system - I've literally seen Vampire games where, for weeks after they were open, we had no idea which Clan the Prince was from, or what the IC power structure even was - and some sort of plan for what characters will be able to get into during their first couple of months is a lot more important than something like 'oh we'll set it in the 80s' other than cosmetically picking different hairdos or having Duran-Duran playing in your local bars.

Sometimes I write here about being able to tell when a game is a labor of love, and not just something put together for its own sake.

The Eighth Sea, from what I've seen and discussed so far, is a labor of love.

@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.

I'm halfway through Skullsworn by Brian Staveley. It's a prequel of sorts to his Chronicle of the Unhewn Throne trilogy which is a kickass series of books to begin with, a great political and military saga set in an Empire whose emperor is murdered, and whose three children - all following completely different paths at the time - begin targets.

Anyway, this novel is pretty neat - it stars Pyrre Lakatur, a Priestess of the god of death which is short for "she is really really damn good at offing folks" in her younger years, with a backdrop of an ancient race manipulating mortal affairs from the shadows and a rebellion brewing in the background.

Neat stuff.

@bored said in Regarding administration on MSB:

Maybe what I'm scratching at is that the idea of a 'Wora/MSB-designed game' has always kind of been a running joke here, or at least something we understand is impractical (too many cooks, etc). Is there some kind of middle ground to those? To pure abstraction (where I'm not sure the conversation leads to much, result-wise) and 'game by committee'?

You are reading too much into it.

For starters that 'Canon Property' thread wasn't some high-minded effort to design games, by committee or otherwise; it was just me going from reading books and thinking "hey, this would make a cool MUSH setting" to extending the same line of thought to the rest of y'all. That's all, it's all it was.

We're hobbyists playing games, and if we can't afford to lighten up some and throw ideas on walls just for the hell of it then who can? But on top of that you never know, some might stick. A random thought you or I have can bloom into someone else's head into a fully fledged awesome MUSH... or it could just be an exercise in creativity and futility at the same time.

Conversely I don't know that you can produce a game through an MSB thread. The very idea of reconciling all these visions and goals, let alone personalities, is hardly promising. You'd probably have much better luck sitting in a Skype/Hangouts window with a couple of people you can work well with and hushing something out.

All that though doesn't mean we can't talk about stuff here just because we're aware they quite likely won't ever happen. It might. It might not. Speaking for myself though just discussing it is fun on its own, which is 90% of why I'm here.

That make sense?

@bored said in Regarding administration on MSB:

@Arkandel, I've noticed, has started a few abstract 'Discuss a Thing' style threads himself, and that's a good start, although some of them may also suffer from the abstractness. I am in favor of promoting this stuff but I'm not sure how we're going to do it. What can we do here? I'm willing to help!

That happens for two reasons:

1. I just... like discussing things (look at my thread history!). In fact I'm not greatly interested in discussing MSB in particular, as it feels pretty meta. I'd rather talk about plot design, characters or whatever else.

2. I think being abstract and not hyper-focused lets us think outside of the box sometimes. Not everything has a solution (let alone a resolution) but we can still improve even from dead-end ideas. For example as a result of people thinking about giving 'star' reviews for games here I've been looking at nodebb plugins (there's just one, and the documentation on it is pretty thin) that could pull it off; but just because it can't be done it doesn't mean it wasn't a great suggestion.

@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.

@krmbm said in Regarding administration on MSB:

What we know is that the people here use the Hog Pit more than any other forum. Invalidating actual statistics because they don't agree with your side of the argument is a pretty shitty way to argue.

Statistics are only as good as how you interpret them.

It is more likely you'd post about the guy who tried to push dick pics on you than a random person you met and had a pleasant scene with, and way more likely that others would respond to the former than the latter.

So what though?

@wizz My issue isn't having the Hog Pit around or that people like a place they can get their fix.

The critical part is containing that sort of thing in there so it doesn't spill out into every other thread. We may need to slap a few wrists to make people behave like adults outside the Hog Pit, at least at first.

A penis PSA.

@krmbm I see no reason, and have no intention, of doing away with the Hog Pit.

The only moderation we've done so far is move threads to it, and the mistake we made was being too aggressive about it. No one's taking it away.

@auspice I didn't want to say anything but it doesn't end well. Sorry.

@auspice My fellow acolytes in pineapple warned me to guard our secrets against the likes of you.

@wolfs said in Regarding administration on MSB:

@arkandel To part of that, I think there needs to be less demanding that people do this or move that or kick so-and-so off or else, complete with "If you don't do what I want, I'm out!" (At least, not without reasonable cause)

That's just petulant. Be better than that.

There are very few people I want to not see on MSB, and none of them are on this thread. I mean that. We have some really bad people in the community in general, they occupy entire threads, and it seems really wasteful to just turn on each other like we need someone to fight or else it's just not as much fun.

I don't even expect us to be excellent to each other, just to be... dunno, adults. If we go too far to take a step back, realize we had a bad moment, say 'hey, sorry, my bad' and just move the fuck on from that. It really frustrates me if we need rules and threats of punishments just to not tear into each other - it says something about us I don't like.

@kanye-qwest said in Regarding administration on MSB:

Ok. What do you have to say about the civil statements I have made in this thread about the issue I brought up? Not threads being moved, or what the moderation should be, because I don't have any feelings about that. I mean specifically about a mod insulting people in the very thread asking for patience while what moderation should look like gets hammered out.

There have been several admissions of fault in this thread, by myself and by others. If you are not satisfied with those I don't know that I can help you much further. But you seem to be demanding @Auspice's head, and you won't get it.

I want to make this place better. Those are the things I have feelings about; when people say 'hey, maybe a forum in between what we know as Constructive and the Hog Pit' I like it, because it's a solution. It's something we can implement, set some rules aside, maybe give a try and see how it goes.

But you seem to have a crusade. I have no time for that.

@kanye-qwest said in Regarding administration on MSB:

You have lost your damn mind.

When I heard you named Auspice mod, I said 'oh, that's going to be TERRIBLE."

If you want me to care about what you said, or what you are saying now, you will do well to be civil about it.

If I came to you on Arx about an issue I disagreed with you about, used all caps to address you and then told you you lost your mind when you asked to tone it down a bit, how long would I have left to be on the game?

I ask for no different courtesy than that.

I'm not saying you should join a cult.

I am saying if you need to join a cult, this is the cult you should join.