Posts made by bored

@thenomain said in Regarding administration on MSB:

@bored said in Regarding administration on MSB:

How many 'and most of the time I moderate it just makes things worse' does a mod get

You're going to have to be clearer on how her recent post made anything worse. I sure as hell don't see that she was:

Well, there's now a mod post that can easily be interpreted/pointed to by detractors as 'MSB admins have to keep their braying hyenas of a community in check' and/or 'MSB admins are posting transparent spin to hide how shitty their posters are.' The post just looks bad, and accomplishes nothing.

@kanye-qwest That's kind of my point? People think she does, but she doesn't.

@darinelle said in Period Piece Face vs Modern Face:

Well, so I think it's more a matter of what people find attractive. Some things are classic looks that are still considered handsome or beautiful, but there's a specific subset of beautiful now that didn't look beautiful to the tastes at the time, so they don't fit as well with period sensibilities.

I'm not sure casting people know that? Like Keira Knightley is constantly cast for historical stuff, and I imagine plenty of folks think she looks good in the costumes etc. But she's bad casting for actual beauty norms for those periods.

@Misadventure @Arkandel was doing a better job by himself before.

At least so far, I haven't seen @ganymede screw up horribly.

I think the historical dopplegangers thing (which blows my mind every time I see it, but also really just confirms that there's a set # of human faces) pretty much disproves this?

A lot of it (OP lists a lot of women, particularly) may just be a makeup thing, also.

@thenomain

It's not so much 'should have talked to the adults' as 'made another stupid mod-voice (or sarcastically non-mod voice?) post' with a possible side helping of 'do they actually discuss this shit?'

Are we not allowed to criticize? How many 'and most of the time I moderate it just makes things worse' does a mod get, both personally, and in the general sense of us realizing maybe mods shouldn't just be modding for the fun of it when ever they have an opinion and instead save it for really critical problems as has always been the case?

@ganymede said in Regarding administration on MSB:

@saosmash said in Regarding administration on MSB:

I thought in this case that the error was giving credence to a complaint without any reality behind it, thereby loaning it legitimacy it might not otherwise have.

This is a reasonable conclusion, but it is true that, in the past, predecessors of this forum have gone to games to "raid" them, so to speak. There was talk of this earlier, which was dissuaded by Arkandel. To deny the possibility of a WORA cabal lurking here to commit nefarious things, however remote, is to deny that past.

I just can't agree with this. While the behavior may have happened, the idea that it really has much to do with the forum is still silly. There are cliques and groups of players here, and those groups may decide to disrupt games, but its not 'MSB' behind it, its the people. You'll never control that, which is part of what makes the post seem so idiotic and tone deaf.

Beyond that, by visibly denying it, your (collective) mod post has probably done more to boost the idea of a 'hive mind' and its ill-intent than any actual wrong people from the board have ever done. It looks like the sloppy, obviously guilty spin-doctoring you'd see on any TV news interview (or like one of the UH staff's 'No problems here folks!' bb-posts).

So, I think it was reasonable to say, as an official statement or otherwise, that the vast, vast majority of us, if not all, do not support this behavior. Its placement is questionable, but I understand and support the sentiment behind the decision to say something.

Bold mine. Did you guys actually discuss this and agree on it? Because the placement seems so obviously silly, and your wording makes it seem like it wasn't as much of a group decision as it's being presented as.

@macha said in Celebrities that are Dead To Us:

@arkandel See, the Takei and Franken thing are part of my whole "If you say no, and they stop..." thing. The guy who accused Takei admits once he actually flat out said NO, Takei stopped and let him leave. Same thing with Franken, when he rehearsed that kiss. She pushed him away and said NO, that was the end of it. Now the picture - he's not actually touching or groping her. I've worn a flak vest, and you're not going to get a feel through one of those. So that picture? Tasteless, deserves the apology, and move on.

This is absolutely my line, too.

There's a whole continuity of behavior here, of degrees of consent (particularly if you want to make the standard 'enthusiastic') and its violation, from being assumed when it shouldn't be to its explicit refusal being ignored... to premeditated drugging of people so that consent is not even on the table. The fact that all of it can be lumped under some broad umbrella of 'sexual misconduct' doesn't make it all remotely equivalent behavior, legally or morally. Frankly, I'm inclined to think more positively hearing about someone doing something unwise, getting rebuffed, and stopping (and owning up to the initial ill-conceived action) than I am to want to skewer them. We're all human and we all err, but those are pretty much the moments that separate the redeemable from those beyond.

Additionally re: Takei (and I'm repeating something I saw elsewhere, but agree with): He's 80. His first sexual experience was as a victim of child molestation, but he doesn't view it as such, and I can only imagine this is because there was no open, accepted, healthy avenue for him to come into his sexuality. When all of gay culture was underground because it was criminal, it's not surprising that the clandestine behavior people were forced to engage in might endanger proper consent practices that we're still struggling to normalize today. This is how I took his Howard Stern stuff, particularly, as him trying to be honest about his behavior but not being able to gracefully put it in context.

So, taken alongside his activism, I'm willing to give the guy a lot of benefit of the doubt. I will be very sad if it turns out he was more like Spacey, if we find out there's a larger history or one of him abusing his power specifically.

Yeah, in terms of physical setting Crab is often a logical choice (why I used Sunda Mizu Mura for my game) because it lets you run Shadowlands TPs without having to work around non-trivial travel time. That said, the Great Famine's major events take place on the Lion/Dragon border in the north.

@ixokai Yeah, I realize that people who weren't there may not really grasp it.

Ignoring the rampant staff cheating and corruption, you could basically go through the threads we have going right now on things not to do on games, how to fix them, etc, take their inverse, and use it as a manual to build Firan. Bigotry and rape as primary staples of play. Actual sexual predators on the staff.

Did we mention it was a PG-13 game and many children played on it?

@pondscum That's the surrounding event, yeah. And a pretty good summary of 'lol Firan' for non-Firan vets who are coming here and not quite getting it

The non-apology feels similar to this here. 'Oh I am clearing the air, but anything I actually did was a misunderstanding or accident.'

@alzie My point isn't to argue any one change, it's that there have been several changes (I think they came out less than a month apart?) and there are almost certainly going to be many more before you open up.

@ixokai If you knew anything about the situation, its not unspecific. Her boyfriend was a Wizard who was fired from staff for altering the game's forgery code in a way that allowed their two alts to arrange and get away with a murder. She can pretend she has no clue but it's pretty much the thing she was 'infamous' for. You can't claim infamy and then pretend the thing you were infamous for is somehow obscure or confusing.

@wahoo I'm not interested in PMs, it wasn't even something that happened to me or anyone I played with. But you're not coming clean by pretending ignorance and trying to push discussion out of public view.

@wahoo OK, forgery code, go.

There's a player you (and your boyfriend) cheated to murder/cover up said murder, and pretty sure she posts here. Seems like a great place to start if you're looking to 'clear the air,' if you want to. I'm not gonna debate the facts, but it says a lot about what your intentions here are.

@wahoo There were tons of shitty players and I'm sure everything had two sides. Yet staff was still, on the whole, very corrupt and abusive, and if you want to push back at that notion in general... well, good luck!

Beyond that, I'm 100% on board with the past being the past and all having a laugh. I doubt anyone cares enough to warrant your 'terror' over people who might still hold a grudge.

But that's also not a back door where you can slip in a claim that everything was 'accidental' or a 'misunderstanding' unchallenged. It wasn't. You did some unethical things intentionally. It's cool, all of us have. Just don't pretend your reputation was unearned.

@alzie

They've already posted several updates that made pretty major changes, so there's every reason to believe they will keep doing that. The rules that exist in a month, several, or whenever it actually hits print could be pretty different.

For instance, there's a lot of discussion about the skill groups not being very well designed right now, as certain areas are over-represented (the Artisan group) while many of what people consider pretty fundamental skills are not included or sufficiently differentiated (no Ride skill, somewhat odd perception rules in the newest update, etc). So I don't think you can assume even those lists are finalized.

@wahoo It was usually done ICly, but obviously with some OOC mean-spiritedness behind it (ie, a senior player with tons of both IC and OOC knowledge 'showing up' someone new, belittling them for sport, whatever).

Firan's staff and co, as a group, were terrible. They did a lot of bad things knowingly, not accidentally. You're in that category too, so you can't write it all off as 'misunderstandings.' But shitty culture creates a shitty norm of behavior, and obviously few of the people themselves were really 'monsters' as much as we might have demonized them in the moment. Whatever earned your 'infamy' was basically standard operating procedure. All kind of old news now.

I mean, I'll help if you get to the point where it's relevant/needed , but I'll be honest that at the current stages things are a bit premature.

The ruleset still doesn't fit very well for MU and they're in beta, so there's a lot of hurtles to address and 'we can open a game shortly' doesn't seem realistic or wise.

Edit: while I mentioned liking the Great Famine in the other thread, I think the Five Rings Heresy is a bad idea because again you're undermining core assumptions of the game. A lot of the material in those books for alternate Rokugans pretty much hinge on the idea that people looking at these supplements probably have a lot of experience with the base game and want something new and different. Five clans isn't just combining Scorpion and Crane, it's pre-return of the Ki-Rin/Unicorn. So you're cutting/changing a lot of core material, as well as potentially negatively impacting players who might enjoy those clans.

I think that was Firan staff-alt 'welcome a new player off the roster' 101. Taleena pulled it on me twice!

'Hi, I see you've taken (name), let me welcome you to your first scene by shaming you publicly for everything your past players did, nevermind that it's not actually documented on your sheet so you can't possibly react to it or defend yourself. Never-mind that our characters are friends, family, or allies and I have no coherent motivation for this behavior. Enjoy your stay!'

@alzie Yep, they made sets/material for some of them (there was a full RPG for Burning Sands, too). They also made material for non-samurai (monks, Ninja, Kolat) playable nonhumans (nezumi, naga) and various other weirdness. RPG splatbook creep is a thing (see: old White Wolf), it doesn't mean that all of that material is good or easy to integrate.

Of the stuff you've mentioned, the Great Famine is probably the most sensible. I've always liked it as a less grandiose, more human take on things, and avoids totally changing the cosmology, technology, etc as many of the others do. All the others also kind of buck default game assumptions (even changing the core great clans) and may be hard to do, especially with a new ruleset.