Best posts made by bored

(sorry, this probably ignores a lot of follow up, I haven't had time to get through all the feedback etc)

@faraday said in Regarding administration on MSB:

No, I am not saying that people being rude on a forum causes people being rude on games. That's absurd. What I am saying is that a culture of negativity can bring out the worst in people instead of the best, and that attitude can spill over into games as well. Especially when it devolves into personal grudges

I still don't see it. Do you actually have any examples of an MSB-origin grudges moving to game? In my experience it's almost always the other way, where something happens on a game, and then someone calls them Hitler (for said game behavior) here. The only thing MSB helps there is that they might be able to see where each goes to play in the future.

The cases of players really being hounded, singled out, or targeted because of stuff here... isn't that mostly people who really fucking deserve it, like VA Spider, Custodius, etc? I have people who really don't like me here. Not one has ever pursued me to a game. And maybe if they found out who I was, they might avoid me or something, but it still seems like you're just talking in vague terms ('negativity', 'toxicity') and suggesting a causal link, where really it's just a reflection of the world we live/play in.

Literally nobody is saying "no bad game reviews" and literally nobody is saying "only kumbaya, rainbows and sunshine are welcome, if you have anything negative to say - zip it".

I don't think people are saying it in those words. But we've seen how the more extreme rules of moderation that you and others specifically pushed for has had the actual effect of stifling it. Again, there is a thread with important content (such as the outing of a serial sexual predator!) buried in the Hog Pit, difficult (if not impossible for a lurker) to find and associate with its game, because we decided the ad thread for a genuinely shitty game couldn't call it what it was.

You want everyone to be 100% high brow intellectuals all the time, and any trace of meanness banished to the depths. You claim you want this while still leaving space for meaningful reviews, but to that I say... are you familiar with the internet? With humanity? It's just a naive desire, and an unreasonable expectation that has an actual effect that is more stifling than you're willing to admit.

The reality is that when you talk about behavior like this, some threshold of nastiness is going to happen. You can't accuse someone of being a creeper, a cheater, a toxic game-destroyer in a nice, positive, constructive way. Nor can you do it without their friends speaking up to defend them, and the larger arguments that result occurring. It just can't be done.

Some blood will always be shed, and this is why we need the 2.0 rules, to clarify and protect a reasonable threshold of negativity where it is tied to meaningful content, while preserving some moderation rules for people who go full nastywordvomit. I have no problem with a post that just calls someone a shithead being deleted, forget moved to the Hog Pit. But at the same time, I have a BIG PROBLEM with the idea that someone will get their post calling out some corrupt dictator sent to the Hog Pit because they happened to include a couple four letter words while expressing their genuine feelings.

For every person from MUSHland I know who posts or lurks here, there are ten more who are all: "Oh hell no" because of the negativity - either witnessed first-hand or by reputation. I think that does, ultimately, undermine the credibility and the good the site can do.

I take rather severe factual issue with this. I think you're taking a small handful of your own friends who may not like posting here because of badness and then generalizing that to way more people than you have any justification to do.

When you see everyone line up to say 'Oh those horrible WORA-ites, they're just haters, I'd never post there!' as a game gets roasted here (this happened on UH), this is... just them brown-nosing staff, and usually they're just lying. Some may not be regular posters, but often are lurkers. Why else do we have the phenomenon of tons of brand new accounts and posters showing up here when something happens on game? Why do the staffers know exactly where to come and defend themselves?

Beyond that, you don't get to take all the people who don't post and claim them as evidence for your vision. Most people who don't participate are failing to do so for the same very mundane reasons only whatever % of any given hobby, game, etc goes to their forums/community site/reddit sub/whatever to post: they don't know about it, don't care, have other shit to do, etc. Not everyone is that interested in a hobby spends non-hobby time discussing the hobby, but you don't get to magically claim those people as evidence on your side.

A big thing here is a wider mistake in game design: setting is not theme. They're related, but not identical.

Sometimes thematic elements are inferred from the setting. IE, when you pick something that is explicitly 'not in our time,' it seems obvious you are saying "We care about the time our game is set in. This matters. Think about your character as a historic person." Maybe because of that, people seem to be a little better about clarifying what they want to leave out, too. "It's history but women aren't property."

In generically modern WoD (which, obviously, is very popular among MSB and pretty relevant) it's a lot less clear. Since the time isn't differentiated, some assume it's not the focus ('this isn't reality!!!'), and that you really care a lot more about all the un-reality of the setting. "I am playing a Vampire. The game is about ageless monsters and their vicious but also distinctly inhuman politics." On the other hand, WoD has a lot of 'through the mirror darkly' kind of theme to it, which other players may latch onto.

So while we probably cannot settle what games should be in a universal way, I think it's probably safe to say that all staff should be clear about what game they're running.

I think conceptually there's something here, it's just not a trivial thing to put together.

Presumably the point of doing something like this is trying to leverage the community aspects of MUing and get a lot of people logged in together, to hold up activity across the various games while also providing the resource. You want people making alts across the different games and all the activity feeding across games. If not, its just an inferior option (in most technically ways) for playing a tabletop with your friends when you have software custom-built for that purpose.

However its definitely trickier than it sounds. Multiple games in one place can just as easily steal focus from each other, turning it from 'the rising tide lifts all ships' to zero sum very quickly (which is part of whats being implied about multiple games in the same system/setting). A bad apple in that community can hurt multiple games, the creepers can creep more efficiently, etc. I think youd' really need to focus on it as a positive community space first, and then curate the games you'd allow to make sure no one was intentionally GOMO'ing each other, that every game was going to be a draw TO the community (from the general MU pop) not just on other people in the community (competitive with other games).

So yeah, potentially great but very difficult to implement.

@Tempest It's not a problem if the individual spaces are moderated per their own rules.

Like, I have no problem with someone who wants to be 'civil argument guy/gal' 80% of the day talking in Game Dev and being super constructive but also wants to be able to take an hour off to call someone a syphilitic cretin in the pit (as long as they understand they'll catch the same in retaliation while they're there). It's possible to abide by different standards in different places. I'm sure I'd catch the occasional wrist-slap in a more moderated area, but w/e.

@surreality Yeah, probably. An attack is an attack, and it comes with a combative attitude of fighting to win despite the casualties or collateral. Unfortunately right now attack is outright in the rules. 'Attack the idea.' Well OK /dials in the artillery

While I like the premise of the game I think it needs to work on integrating all the archetypes, especially since you're tied to one forever and/or have no real control of what you play. There's a lot of focus on the proactive archetypes, ie the obvious leader, fighty or smarts types, or on roles more tied/specific to the scenario (ie the festival staff).

In the last couple events, these people had things to do while some others... just got to watch? Worse, them doing well (ie, building and maintaining defenses etc) directly leads to others having less to do (oh we're safe... hooray?). Safe = little to do, no danger, no GP, etc, so I find myself wanting those players to fail those rolls just so stuff can happen.

I don't think this is intentional but it seems like something to consider for the next round. Also that if you're giving people perks from GP (that might tie them even more to the theme), you may be creating a feedback loop of relevancy.

@botulism That's totally fair. It's a new thing and there's going to be learning steps, and if anything you deserve applause for actually doing something new vs. the same old that we're usually stuck with.

Those changes sound reasonable too. I'd just be cautious about the GP stuff too so that the people who kinda whiffed on round 1 will majorly miss out on round 2 because they lack cool toys.

@misadventure said in Horror MUX:

@deadculture Hmm, I was hoping that clever folks out there had other approaches as well.

I don't think this is a case of obviously right/wrong approach (aside from the one already identified and addressed).

Like the plot speed stuff is mostly a matter of finding the happy medium. Obviously you need stuff happening, but it seems clear the first plot shot by (and ramped up) way too fast, denying people time to get into their characters or organically find their place in stuff.

For the next run, the inspirations are very psychologically-driven stories so I do hope we will get some 1st and 2nd act setup before we get into the full guns blazing Colonial Marines with flamethrowers and miniguns vs. alien hordes. I think that's actually really a big thing for me, it always feels like wasted potential when the 'full truth' gets shown so quickly (same issue I had on 8th sea, for instance). Like we went from... 'Everything's fine' to 'there are weird boars' to 'there are native hordes kidnapping and sacrificing people' to 'there are skeletal hordes' to 'we're gonna be nuked' in about a week?

It's hard to RP being scared when the stakes get raised every scene (or twice in one scene last night, birds then nukes!)

It was also just kind of the tone/genre-deaf nature of the character. As I said, I think there are plenty of try-hards on the game, and quite a few people with the same homogenous list of combat-oriented traits etc. However, at least in this play through, many of them are soldiers, killer robots, etc, where there's at least some justification.

The character in question was an 'emo kid,' who was... statted like a ninja. In a setting where people had traits related to things like sports they did (for physicals), social media, journalism, music, etc, he had: 'Strength (Melee Weapons)' and 'Finesse (Stealth)'. If we were playing a story where WoD-esque trenchcoat samurai were applicable, it would have been OK, but we weren't.

I will say I put this partly on staff for even approving him, although I think they've gotten a little more proactive in terms of monitoring quirks for breadth and genre-applicability in the newer round of apps.

@faraday said in Social Stats in the World of Darkness:

social situations make up, what, 90% of MU scenes?

While I have no interest in rehashing most of this discussion, this is a really key point to keep in mind. Whatever level of dice authority you want, whatever rule system you want follow (I agree with @Thenomain and @Ganymede that you ought to do that, whatever you pick), you need to keep in mind that it will be happening with this degree of frequency and players need to be comfortable with that.

Or in other words:

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

@arkandel I felt the same way recently, that in order to ask someone to leave I had to catch them breaking an actual rule.

Then I realized it's perfectly valid to do it because someone is a shitty person who bullies and hurts others, even if they don't do it right in front of me on my game. This hobby is toxic for a reason - we tolerate toxic behavior from toxic people out of a misguided sense of fairness. No one has a right to play on a game.

Yeah, this.

If @arkandel doesn't want to fire his buddy in this particular instance, whatever. But the idea that there's ever going to be some kind of 'clear' violation in situations like this (in the general sense) is asinine. The obvious and egregious problem cases in our community are, comparatively, very easy to solve. They do shit and get banned. Then they come on here to whine and scream about getting banned, and get banned again. But behavior like this? It goes on and on. And on. For years.

The VASpider comparison is useful, even if not precise in magnitude (maybe). She doesn't tend to break obvious, actionable rules either. So... what level of 'toxic, manipulative, serial problem player' does someone have to be before we actually acknowledge it and "yeah but they're my friend and I'm sure they're cool and were just acting out of stress" stops being the assumed, default excuse? And, in terms of administration, what the fuck actually counts as 'misconduct'? Do things on games even count, or does someone basically have to rageban a poster to get the axe?

@Ganymede said in Difference between an NPC and a Staff PC?:

@krmbm said in Difference between an NPC and a Staff PC?:

I object to staffers using NPCs - special characters with access to shit regular players can't get (whether that's abilities, connections, information, whatever) - as their personal PCs, and justifying it by saying "it's just an NPC."

That sounds like unethical conduct to me, which makes it fall outside of whether sex and romance should be in the toolkit of an ethical staffer running a plot for someone.

I'm not sure even this is true, because pursuit of romantic plots is a well established goal of RP for many players. A staff bit that has access to all kinds of unique nonsense barred to the general PC population will be pursued as a romantic object in part because of those qualities, whether for raw speshul factor or the chance of a magical baby or whatever. See Firan/Arx, or even on WoD with a staffer playing some otherwise banned bloodline, tribe, etc. I remember baby drama over White Howlers, back in the day.

This is getting increasingly ridiculous. No one is 'drafting a set of standards.' No one is going to go over and knock on Arx's door to make people stop TSing with their magic elves or PC-turned-NPC superheroes that are already lulzy as fuck in the ethics department.

But as a broad statement, I still have no problem casting NPC TS as generally unethical. Use @Ganymede's phrasing if you prefer, because lawyer, but there's so much baggage wrapped up in sexual interaction that I simply cannot accept people shrugging it off as no big deal. It will always be kind of a big deal, give or take, it will always carry implications of favoritism or coercion. It's not being treated special because we're prudes, it's being treated that way because human nature shows it to be that way.

I mean...

@Sparks said in Difference between an NPC and a Staff PC?:

Yes, if you are GM'ing for a specific organization—if you're running games at a convention for WotC or Paizo—you do have a set of rules you're expected to adhere to, and which you agree to when you sign up to do that for them. But if you are running a game in your house, you are not running it on behalf of anyone else. You do not have to sign anything before you sit down to run a game, not even if you post an open invite on the board at the gaming shop and allow people you don't even know to come.

If you're running a game in your house, you're still beholden to a 'set of standards' you yourself didn't create. They're called 'society' and the laws of wherever you live.

This is, again, where it becomes almost riotously bizarre the way this defense is being constructed. Sexual harassment of this kind is a real problem in gaming. Women getting hit on/propositioned/offered benefits for sexual favors in real life when entering gaming spaces is a problem long reported on. You wouldn't hesitate to call a DM doing that a deplorable of the highest magnitude, I imagine, even if they'd skirted breaking any actual laws. That is applying a set of standards to someone's home game, too. Saying its onerous to have even thoughts or discussions about it here is ridiculous.

I feel like the whole 'omg MUSHing culture is so ridiculously horrible' thing is... I don't know, in comparison to what? Other online venues? In person tabletop?

My anecdote here is that a friend and I joined up for Storium back when it was the new hotness, and that place had a pretty distinct set of dysfunctions as well, including 'that guy' who joined every game and generally stank up the place but no one seemed to be willing to get rid of. I don't know how antisocial behavior is something we have a unique grasp on.

In my eyes, MU*-dysfunction is distinguishable from generalized internet RP dysfunction only in facets that have to do with the medium itself: we have 'garbage pub chat' and 'OOC room toxicity' because we have public channels and OOC rooms as unregulated commons. Our cliques organize in certain ways because the games structurally encourage it (through factions, online tt-like ~6 person plots, etc), but people are gonna stick with their friends everywhere. And, proximity to Shangrila aside, I've seen more egregious 'hey this sounds like statutory rape' while playing FF14 of all things.

The one thing we definitely are is old and established. At least in our little corner. Once again, the other little corners are all similar.

@Ghost said in Cyberrun:

Don't act like this is the same thing as [...] those pornstars who look 16 but are really 19.

If you're relying on this one, you're about 1000% more likely to be 'accidentally' doing RL harm than anyone RPing ageshit on a MU.

Also: every MU any of us plays on relies entirely on a 'You must be 18 to play here' warning that does nothing to assure children are not playing here. Anyone who TSes on any game without knowing the other player extensively enough to verify their RL life details is taking an equivalent risk to be exposing an actual minor to sexual content. Most players I know started when they were underage.

That said, I return you to your regularly scheduled episode of MU:SVU.

This has to be up there for the tamest drama in the history of WORA/MSB.

If you count the spelling variations, Ale(c/k/x)(s)(ander).

It has that front of the alphabet 'I gave up looking on page 1' lazy appeal, makes you sound like a badass conqueror maybe?, etc. I'm guilty of the edgy 'Russian with a K' variation myself.

@Arkandel I was going to write a lot more stuff but thinking about most of this just kind of reminded me why canon games tend to be disappointing (and it's a shame, because there are some I like in theory).

Ideally? You'd want people mixing and matching their relationships, trying out new dynamics and character angles (or why else are you playing?), etc. But 9 times out of 10, you see this stuff and it's just cringe garbage. It's the online couple where you just end up with not one but two interesting characters who are never in public. Or whatever orientation/gender/race bending they do follows the worst MU stereotypes so you get a LAS version of the character rather than an Asian version, or a slash fic gay version, etc.

I think @Ghost kinda hit it, mostly.

@Auspice The futziness of theater of the mind combat distances (since almost everyone will have their own slightly different vision of the layout) is a bit of its own whole thing.

But certainly I think 'X is clearly disrespecting the scene by posing over/retconning a clearly established prior fact' is a huge red flag pretty much in any case, be it for creepy fixation or just spotlight stealing. 'Playing with others' is basically the definition of our hobby, so if you're bad at it...

@surreality Yeah, which demonstrates the necessary policy/cultural change. I also think @faraday really deserves some credit here (and its unfortunate she was kind of jumped on) because developing vastly more technically complicated code to facilitate the reporting process on Ares and thus make complaints more actionable is an important step there and one that reflects the technological improvements we need to keep up with. 100% client-side logging isn't reliable, and so it's not reliably actionable, and that helps undermine the entire process.

Basically, trivial code or trivial player effort will be sufficient in trivial cases (ooc please stop -> ooc ok!, or +ftb -> silence). Its the non-trivial cases that are largely the issue, not only when they happen, but because of the specter they cast over other interactions. And it's here that it's important to know not just that you have whatever initial command, but also an entire route you can follow-up through with a reasonable expectation of support and action.

In the dark days of oWoD, I was definitely once called to judge a vampire chick biting off some dude's dick. Agg damage, good plan. A+.