Posts made by bear_necessities

@tez said in farfalla banned:

@ganymede

Your decision sucks. Post the logs.

decisions*

Post the logs, bring back downvotes, remove Derp as admin.

@arkandel said in MUs That We Would Love To Make (But Won't):

The problem with that is exactly what you'd expect. It's not coming up with the concept that's the blocker. Most people can cook up a "my dog was kidnapped by a goblin, get her back!" questline, WoW-style.
It's running it. That takes more time, effort, following up.

I think that about sums it up. Having the tools available (bingo cards, random plot generators, actual dungeons they can crawl) is great and I think it can be helpful but I don't think it makes an actual noticeable difference to the players who are willing to run scenes on their own. I would actually say that the people who would use those tools are already the people who would run small one-off scenes without them.

@derp What? There is a big difference between being able to play a character and being able to create a plot that is fun for everyone involved.

@arkandel said in MUs That We Would Love To Make (But Won't):

in fact unless there are generous reward systems encouraging them to do so,

What kind of generous reward systems though? I have thought about this a lot but I've come up kinda blank.

@il-volpe I think those games tend to be hard to run for longer than a few months, just because you have so many different factions and not enough people willing to tell stories for them. And then if you stick to one trope (like General Hospital or Chicago Med) then you end up telling the same stories over and over eventually.

It's not really hard to build a game like that, it's just difficult to keep people engaged and buying into the concept. Those types of games just too easily turn into sandbox mode, IMO.

I guess I've yet to see why you would need to puppet an NPC and write dirty-talk to someone for several hours for story purposes. If pillow talk is what you're trying to gain out of it, why not FTB the sex and get straight to doing the pillow talking?

I have had a staff try and use an NPC to TS me. I felt intimidated, I felt like if I said no it would affect my ability to stay on the game, and thus I did not stay on the game. And maybe it all boils down to trusting staff, sure, but again - what story purpose does the actual TS have aside from it's something you like to write? And if it's something you like to write... what is the problem with just going on your PC and humping to your heart's content?

@ganymede said in GMs and Players:

@bear_necessities said in GMs and Players:

If I feel like the optics are bad, I change my approach to certain things.

If the optics are so poor that a disinterested third party thinks I've acted with bias, then I would seriously question the decision I made.

I don't think we're in disagreement here at all. I just don't think that staff should pack up and go because someone perceives them as having bias. We all have bias, people are gonna people and perceive biases even when it doesn't exist. And really what matters, I think, is what you said - if you are doing something that looks bad, either change course or expect people to walk away from your game.

@ganymede But what is a reasonable perception? I mean, I am pretty sure anyone here could come up with reasons why any staff on any game is biased. That doesn't mean it's true.

I will say that I regularly think of optics and how that can be perceived. If I feel like the optics are bad, I change my approach to certain things. But just because bias can be perceived does not mean it's actually happening.

@ganymede said in GMs and Players:

If you are perceived as having bias then you should no longer staff.

So I'm going to disagree with that point, because I'm 110% positive that every staff on every game is at some point perceived as having a bias. Whether or not that perception is reality is one thing, but if staff should step down every time they are "perceived" as having bias? We wouldn't have anyone staffing.

As far as the queston that was asked by @icanbeyourmuse, I don't think staff should be TSing on NPCs. If you want to TS people, use a PC. NPCs are there to move plot along, if that plot somehow involves a PC trying to bone the NPC, then FTB. If your plot involves the NPC boning a PC, uh.. please rethink that plot, I guess, cuz that seems super predatory and uncomfortable for everyone.

I have seen it become a problem with staff using their PC to bone people, but it was because the only way you could get plot was by being romantically/sexually involved with the staff person's PC. I voted with my feet and stopped playing that game.

@reimesu said in GMs and Players:

@bear_necessities Isn't it? Roz is talking about banning innocent people in the name of the greater good.

Go on, you guys explain to me how going all nuclear option on innocent people is the right thing to do. I'm listening. Explain to me how mentally harming innocent people is a good thing.

You keep saying 'innocent person', 'innocent person'. Who is being banned that is an innocent person????? When did I EVER say that we should ban innocent people? When did @Roz say that?????

Come on now, you know and I know that this isn't at all what we're saying here.

@reimesu Well that sucks and I'm sorry that happened to you. It is definitely not what I'm talking about here.

@reimesu Were you banned from this game by staff because of the whisper campaign against you? Did you talk to staff about the whisper campaign? I guess I'm not seeing the correlation between having a whisper campaign started by an asshole and you wanting staff to have evidence that someone is a stalker before they get banned.

I'm definitely not advocating games being ruled by mob rule. But I can say that DNCs do not work in all situations. The situation that changed my perspective here involved two people where DNC was the option, the DNC was honored, and the manipulator went on to hurt several other women, none of whom felt they had the 'proof' required to stop it. He never broke any DNCs - he just moved onto the next one, and the next one, and the next one.

@reimesu I'm sorry that happened to you. I don't think anybody here is suggesting that they would ban someone based on a whisper campaign. That's the sort of negative, toxic environment I don't want anywhere near my game.

@roz said in GMs and Players:

That does not mean that you have to simply believe each and every report that comes your way. There is a measure of common sense to be deployed here. If you have a long-term player who has a visible history of getting on well on the game, who does not have a history of making a lot of complaints, such that receiving a complaint from them is notable -- that is very different from receiving a complaint from someone who makes them regularly and frivolously and who maybe has had more than one complaint made about them. Someone making a clear, serious request involving stalking or targeted harassment is different from someone making a request about not getting along with someone. Yes, absolutely engage in judgment and critical reasoning here. Absolutely. But if a player's history on a game points to them being generally above board? That's also a form of evidence.

This is what I wanted to say but you said it best so thank you

@derp said in GMs and Players:

Honestly, I think it's also about what kinds of players do you want to attract. Do you want the ones that care about rules, and process, and transparency, even if it takes time? Or do you want the ones that prefer immediate gut-check judgment calls based on personal beliefs and social opinions? Those are two different kinds of player, and while neither of them is neccessarily inherently wrong -- they both have some positives and negatives -- they're not really compatible viewpoints.

I think when you break it down like that, you are grossly misrepresenting me and what we are all trying to say here and it's very condescending. I want to attract players who: want to have fun, are not distasteful, and are not going to create a negative environment. That is it.

@derp said in GMs and Players:

Because doing the opposite of this and just taking everyone at face value is how you get people like Spider, and some of the people at games like The Network right now, just making random accusations and expecting that staff will act on it because they said so, to the detriment of those not in the person's in-group.

So I'm definitely not saying take everyone at face value or accept 'random' accusations against people and unilaterally ban without any evidence whatsoever. I'm talking for extreme cases like stalking or people who have been knowingly abusive in the community. Like if someone came to me and said Ruiz was on my game, I wouldn't even blink twice even if I couldn't prove it. If I thought a new character was the person on my no-fly list, who have a HISTORY of being abusive crazy manipulators? There's the door. The risk to my game by banning someone like that is minimal; the risk of keeping them until they 'show' themselves is huge.

And honestly it sounds like you got burnt and that sucks and there are definitely people on games who have their own cliques that cozy up to staff and get rid of people they don't like. It goes back to staff needing to create a safe and collaborative community.

@derp How do you expect someone to "prove" that someone else is stalking them? I don't even get that, like what evidence would you even need in this situation??? Usually stalkers don't come onto games and page the person they are stalking like yo wuzzup it's me, your stalker, but if you've been stalked by the same person for long enough, you know their mannerisms, how they RP, the kinds of characters they make, etc.

Look, I'm not saying you should always side with your existing players but if they are otherwise reliable narrators, why would you believe they have some nefarious purpose in declaring so-and-so a stalker? And I think that's kind of the crux of what you're saying - you have to have proof becase otherwise you could just be telling lies and honestly that's how you get people like Ruiz, or that Down with OPP guy everyone talks about, and by the time you figure it out it's way too late and it's already tainted your game.

@derp Exactly how is removing a stalker from your game 'playing favorites'????????

@reimesu said in GMs and Players:

But there's also one thing that's being ignored in this conversation: does the game have an 'automatically banned from this game' list? I mean, if it's the person you're referencing, I'd think he'd earn a spot on that list.

Yes.

I think @faraday said something that really resonated with me and that is that MUSHing is a community. I talk to my players almost daily on the chat chan or in pages - I may not consider them my RL friends, but I do consider them 'friends' in the sense that I care about them, I'm investing my time to spend time with them, and I consider my players important in the community we have created, even if I 'decorated' the room. Some of the players on my game are people I've known for years. One is my BFF, a few are people I would consider my RL friends, a lot of the rest are friends-of-friends or friends-of-friends-of-friends. But I mean what matters (to me) is we created a really cool community and it is my job as staff to make sure that community stays cool.

I learned the hard way that just because someone doesn't have evidence, doesn't mean it isn't happening to them (see @krmbm's post). I gut-check even more now and tend to keep an eye on people that raise my red flags. Not everybody is going to have logs that are a smoking gun of terrible behavior. Manipulators are manipulative because they tend to do things that are less overt and convince people NOT to log, NOT to report, etc.

@derp said in GMs and Players:

Yeah, you would call the police because the police are there to deal with shit like that. Which is also kind of the point.

I actually think you're purposefully missing all the points here which makes this not a very constructive thread.