Posts made by Arkandel

@Roz said:

One of the biggest things I can say is to just pay more attention if you have women in a group with you. A lot of stuff starts with comments you might find innocuous because you're not used to thinking about them. Call us SJW whiners if you want, but dumb sexist jokes pave the way for gross sexist jokes which pave the way for worse and worse. Harassment proliferates where others remain silent. Some harassers do keep their worst comments quiet until they're in private, but I think more than you're expecting happens in front of other people.

So this is a thing: Men give men a hard time. It's not to say girls can't be mean - to each other or otherwise - but the level of crudeness in an all-male conversation, which may but isn't necessarily about sexist stuff might surprise. For me to notice a guy is actually being a dick to someone he'd need to take it above that level, right? Because it's what puzzles me, since in my experience (I know, it's only my experience but what else do I have?) men are more restrained in the presence of chicks, not less so. That is, it takes most of my geekfriends far longer to think it's okay to say, swear around girls let alone joke around at anywhere near the same extent - and it's always more civil.

That's why I asked if you spot things when they are in isolation and not in mixed settings. I am not disputing that it happens, I am saying that if it's either not perceived at all ("it was just Bob being Bob!") or Bob waits until he manages to be relatively alone with a girl. But you say it's the former, not the latter:

These issues don't happen because other men are absent to deter them. They happen because other men don't notice or say anything. They happen because men read a long account of a woman's history of being harassed in geek cultures, and they say things like "I'm calling bullshit" or "Well I didn't really like how it's written" or "That's probably exaggerated" or "I'm not saying she's lying, but..." or "Wow I really can't imagine that happening" or "Well stop hanging out in [this hobby that the man would probably never consider leaving themselves if they were harassed, because they'd consider it their right to not be harassed]." Commenting on personal accounts of women's harassment like that is a luxury. And it's easy. And it's just the first step in building these atmospheres in harassment.

I don't care what I read about or who I think is exaggerating, and in this I'm hardly the exception here - if a store owner in a place I was at made a breeding comment at a thirteen year old girl it wouldn't end well. I mean what we were discussing here wasn't a borderline case between flirting and going too far, it was physical molestation (grabbing someone's ass out of the blue), crude comments made to minors, etc. There is no way in hell those would go unnoticed or not called out. I mean they wouldn't, there's just no damn way. So what gives?

Believe women. Believe it when all the women commenting just here are saying, "Yup, I can believe it." Believe it when the vast majority of women can say, "Yeah, I've been sexually harassed recently." Because the things that guys can't believe about what we say we experience is the fucking background noise our entire lives.

I believe it. I just don't know how to help. What kinds of things should I be looking for? What am I missing? When does this happen? How? What forms does it take?

I literally just had the urge to say something like, "Sorry for going on a rant there," because women are constantly taught to apologize for the space they take up, but I'm not really sorry. This shit is important. The fact that I feel strongly about it is a reasonable, proportional reaction to the situation.

There's no need for an apology from you any more than I would apologize because I also happen to have a penis.

@mietze said:

It's nice that some people can't even fucking imagine anyone saying "if she bleeds she can breed" grossness to a 13 year old. I'm going to guess though that /you don't have one/. Well, I can't not fucking imagine it, because I've seen many things like it. Directed at mine, and her friends, and at other slightly older but still very young kids in "gamer geek territory" and outside it. And fuck yes the mama bear comes right the fuck out. (And I research any new place like whoa before we do). I /envy/ you if you can't imagine it.

That's why it's important to have conversations like this. Personally I can't imagine not reacting strongly if a child - anyone's - is addressed that way, but that's where communication breaks down some. For example my first explanation here was that maybe my choice of gaming venues excludes places where that would come up, which doesn't make sense since you explicitly state you research such places ahead of time. And while I've met objectionable people during my gaming I truly can't fathom anyone who'd act that way - but again my inability to even consider it doesn't mean it doesn't happen.

So how does it? I mean who does it - are they, for lack of a better term, weirdos? Do they seem to come from a particularly skewed demographic? Do they act differently (more appropriately perhaps) when other men are around?

Give us some insights and we can keep an eye out. Maybe not for your daughter but someone else's.

Yeah, that's an issue with other shows as well, although it can involve different types in each of them. I could name The Walking Dead as an infamous example.

@Kanye-Qwest said:

@Arkandel said:

@Kanye-Qwest What I would say is that in all of my time gaming I've never seen girls treated like that at all, and even more so as openly as that article.

Bully for you. You realize you're saying if a behavior isn't something you have noticed, it's unlikely to be happening? You seem like a smart and reasonable person, surely I don't have to explain the flaw in that logic.

I can only attest to what I have personally witnessed. It doesn't mean what I haven't seen doesn't happen, that would indeed be a fallacy, but for instance ... we have a sizable gamer community right here on the forum. What have you seen and perceived? As to why that's important, keep reading.

Your experience does not in any way, shape, or form dictate another person's experience, and to my original point - the assumption that something didn't happen because you didn't see it is a large part of the problem.

I am not disputing things like that happen. But are you going to say reports of them not happening should be silenced? If nothing else that could indicate the scale of sexual harassment within a community - whether, in other words, such behavior is typical or isolated. If on the other hand some of us - especially of the female persuasion - have then it would be an indication of the opposite.

We are a small sample but not necessarily tiny. I'd be interested in hearing more about it.

Whether or not all the things described in that article happened to the author, all the things described in that article do happen. It behooves us as human beings to let conversations about them happen, too.

I have no issue with the conversation happening - it should, in fact. I do have an issue however if someone lied about it in an article by saying it happened to them if it didn't. It distracts and detracts from harassment, allowing doubt to be cast on every report - do I need to explain why one person misrepresenting the truth in an overt fashion can cheapen true reports of actual incidents happening to others? If nothing else it gives an excuse to exactly the kinds of people who shouldn't have any to roll their eyes and look elsewhere.

@Kanye-Qwest I wouldn't call it bullshit - although it's weird all those things kept happening to the one person who kept going back. What I would say is that in all of my time gaming I've never seen girls treated like that at all, and even more so as openly as that article.

If it was written decades ago? I could kinda sorta see it. But a barely-teen girl being told she's old enough to breed in a public space less than 7-8 years ago? I've never been anywhere that would have gone well, although the truth is I haven't been everywhere. Anywhere I could name such actions (and the assumption is it was recurring and not a very isolated one-time incident) would have brought down such a shitstorm on the store owner it wouldn't even be funny.

Banshee's baaack. Bigger and hairier than ever for one last season.

@Coin Can't you leave it at the office and pick it up the next day? It's what I do if it starts raining after I get here.

@Packrat said:

Amber was a character on Star Crusade who...

Well actually she was not given unfair advantages over the other County level nobles and was in many ways arguably the weakest. Certainly she was not particularly favoured or disfavoured by staff, non of whom knew who she was from prior games and none of whom were particularly friends after she did turn up.

Remember that nobody had more than a fractional overview of what was happening on that game, people fixated on their issues or opposition without realising their rivals were generally being funked over in eight different ways themselves but dealing (or not) with it without advertising everything.

Some people have alleged she was kind of a bitch but it was apparently a given for people to complain that everyone who was not them or their ally was unfairly favoured and/or evil on that game. I only RPed with her like four or five times but she seemed okay.

She was markedly less prone to histrionics than most players though and was a political rival of Apollonius' character.

I think a staff member did play one of her vassal barons but he was playing a decadent fop who was not exactly a key asset.

So she was a player who did nothing remarkable and was less prone to bad things than others?

Man, MSB's whistle blowing sure is failing us these days.

@Roz That URL path is relative and won't work.

I've never worked anywhere where touching at all was acceptable except between somewhat close friends/long time colleagues.

At my current job one guy sometimes randomly walks by and shoulder-bumps me hard, but we play basketball together so it's kinda a bro thing. Otherwise it's just a no-no, you don't do it unless you're 100% it's okay.

Speaking of, kinda, at my old job there was a couple (now married) who were into PDA. It wasn't very uncommon to see them get touchy-feely with each other and on at least one occasion his hand was on her ass in the common dining area rather obviously. Like come on, dude.

@Coin said:

Otherwise, if a gamerunner has real concerns, they can just not allow the game, you know?

Yeah, but there's a range between Promethean ("I'm'a gonna have to change things a lot to make this viable and/or it alters the whole setting in a drastic fashion") and Geist ("I added a sphere but people who don't care probably won't have to").

Some spheres are just more modular than others.

@Coin said:

Beast is out.

Do we have anything close to a consensus about Beast?

I've read the preview .doc that came out a while ago (well... read is too strong a word, I browsed it), and I also read a few forums where people generally bitched - as one does on a forum - about how Beast intrudes on sphere sovereignty by demanding everyone loves/respect them, which might offset certain games.

Opinions: Is that the concern of people who like to bitch or a legitimate issue? Is it a cool sphere to have around? How smoothly in general would it be to add it to a nWoD game without fucking everything else up?

@lordbelh I've heard of that show but I've never watched or even seen a trailer for it. What's the TL;DR version of why it's awesome?

Sometimes I wish more people wanted to take over the stage. It's more often that I get tired of having to do something to get things moving than I am worried about someone else doing too much.

The sole exception to this is relationship RP. That just seems to happen no matter what.

Yeah, if you are killing a PC then give them something to remember. You can totally brag about a well eviscerated character.

@mietze For me the very worst IC deaths I've seen - and they haven't happened to my PCs - were off-screen ones handled through +jobs. I absolutely despise that kind of thing as long as the player is available and willing to play something out.

There is just no reward at all, no involvement, dramatic moment or at least closure offered to a character who is killed via a Geist power or the such in his sleep. It can be fun to deal with portraying a demise and walk away from it feeling ending it was a story told with a beginning and an ending - but if all you have to show is a @mail "yeah, you're dead. Sorry about that, please let us know if you have any questions!" then none of these factors apply.

@Kanye-Qwest said:

I don't think anyone likes losing a character unexpectedly, and that's understandable. But I think you're going to the extreme other end of the spectrum. Not every PC can be the protagonist, but that doesn't mean every PC is an extra. Running with that analogy I would liken PCs to an ensemble cast, like in the Avengers or LOTR, etc.

It's not always fun for everyone involved, but good stories contain risk, and danger, and it's hard to really FEEL those things if they aren't...real.

I think what @Ghost was saying is it's different to know there's a potentially tense situation ahead which you decide to become involved, and - for example - an +event advertised as a social event in which the ST gets a PC casually carved to pieces by the Prince simply to drive home the point of how impulsive, powerful and unpredictable the Prince is without any warning, previous build-up or reason to expect such a thing might be in the works.

Gameplay is a very important consideration for, you know, games.