Somewhere in the world, there is a park where there are an infinite number of basketball courts. Now, you have to pay a small amount of money monthly to use the basketball court, and it's really less a basketball court and more an area where you can set up hoops, and bring your own paint to paint the lines, maybe polish the floor yourself. You also want the people who play basketball with you to look cool, so you design the jerseys and shorts, too! Anyone who plays in your basketball court can bring their own ball, though, just in case you're not around with yours! But there are an infinite number of these courts, and anyone can have one if they have a little money and the motivation and time to put into it. This is not a public court at a park that needs to be shared. So if I pay for the court, and I put in the time and effort to make it nice and have the hoops and the painted lines and all that shit, and then I say: "Anyone who wants to play, can come play, but on this court, we only play HORSE," then guess what? If you don't want to play HORSE, you don't get to use the court. You also don't get to use the court if I don't like you. Why? Because it's my court. And if I want, I can make it as exclusive or as public as I want, applying whatever filters I want, and deciding whether or not certain rules of the game are applicable--or not.

Basketball is MUSHing. The court is a game server. The painted lines and hoops are setting and code. The rules are ... the rules. And the ball is plot. Sometimes I bring my ball out, sometimes you have to bring your own. Some courts require you to bring your ball more often than others.

This isn't that hard. If a game is promoting a type of play you don't like, don't play. It sure as shit doesn't sound like the people having a good time are actively going out of their way out of character to force other people into having a bad time. They're just playing in a way that other people don't like. Tough. Especially since I'm positive some of the people complaining have, in the past, decided that their fun was above other people's and they could just do whatever they wanted and be fucking dicks because "well, that's just my character".

Relatedly, no one needs a reason to dislike someone else. Some people just don't click. If Johnny and James are best buds, and James and Terry are good friends, but Johnny hates Terry, then if James tries to force them together so they can be a Power Trio, James is an asshole. Conversely, if James goes to a party with Terry, but doesn't invite Johnny, Johnny has no fucking right to be pissed off, because he hates Terry--why the fuck would James be an asshole and put them together in an uncomfortable situation?

Games work the same way, both with playstyle and with people. If I am in a group with Johnny, who hates Terry, I am not going to invite Terry to the same group. And if I play on a game that has a playstyle Terry likes, but Johnny doesn't, there is no reason to change the game, it's just not the game for Johnny.

This is kind of like going to a consent-based, traits-based superhero game and whining because they won't use a system. The only difference is that playstyle changes, grows, and is harder to recognize immediately. But it's still the same concept: if the game doesn't operate in a way you like, it is not the game for you. You can say "this is why it's not", but if staff says "well, then this isn't the game for you", then that's pretty much it, man.

This doesn't excuse people from being assholes, but this sort of "public games are for everyone, if they aren't, don't advertise them as public" bullshit has got to stop. Public games are public, but that doesn't mean they're for everyone. These things are not synonymous. Stop conflating the two, this isn't government and your taxes are not paying for someone's MU.

If we want to build a better community, we need to start by defining which parts of the hobby we all have in common, and which parts are particular. Playstyle is the latter.

@Tat said in A bit of trouble on Firefly:

This player had also picked up a roster on Spirit Lake. Thanks to folks who shared info about him - after getting the new Ares security upgrades in, he's been banned from us as well.

His behavior on our game never crossed a line (that we knew of), but given what we've seen from him from people I know and trust, we're not willing to give him that chance.

@faraday said in A bit of trouble on Firefly:

Of note, since not everyone reads the Ares forums...

The player in question has been banned from AresCentral.

Being banned from a particular game generally does not affect your AresCentral status. However:

1. If you’ve been banned from a game, you may not come here and pester the game-runner(s) who banned you. Take the hint and leave them alone.
2. I reserve the right to make exceptions in extreme circumstances, like someone who’s been serially harassing people and maliciously attempting to bypass bans across multiple games.

They responded (due to a glitch with the forum ban... my error) protesting that they had been so very polite while doing #1, while apparently completely missing the fact that it was inappropriate to do so in the first place. (And also letting #2 sail right over their heads.)

This sort of thing (and @GirlCalledBlu and @Seraphim73 's banning of him based on his attitudes on Gray Harbor and Arx) makes me happy for the community.

I have always felt that the whole "well they haven't done anything here and until they misbehave within the bounds of the game we can't do anything" was absolutely ridiculous. As a community, we need to support each other across games; we all play in each others' games and staff for each other. We are, in effect, a community, and we don't just need to look out for each other, but also be willing to accept that when someone does something inappropriate to one of us, they don't get to just connect to another game and act as if it didn't happen.

I'm White Hispanic with blue eyes; my roots are Spaniard and Italian.

I once took a road trip in the nineties along the border between Mexico and the U.S. with three other people: my step-father (same ancestry), and two other (pretty white, but maybe a bit more olive, I dunno) dudes (his friend and that friend's son). Both of them were born in the U.S., my step-father had had his U.S. citizenship for years; I was the only one who was an immigrant.

Every time -- and I do mean every single time -- we crossed back from Mexico to the U.S. (we did it like five times, it was the point of the road trip), they were asked for their papers. I was not. In at least two occasions, when my papers were offered, the migra officer waved it off, because it was unnecessary.

White is absolutely about the color of your skin and the way people identify (or don't) with you in the U.S. It was like that back then and it's still like that now (my brother can attest). Being of Italian or even Spaniard blood does not make you some swarthy POC and I really wish a lot of the people who look like me and are from the places I am and my ancestors were from would recognize that.

P.S. There's white people in Mexico and Brazil and Venezuela and Uruguay and Colombia and Argentina and... I'm not gonna list all of South America, but just shove it all together. A lot of us are from the same ancestry I am (usually a lot more Spaniard than Italian; in Brazil a lot more Portuguese). There's racism all throughout South America -- based on skin color, based on provenance, based on who your parents or ancestors were. And at no point -- not a single fucking moment -- has being on the white side of that not benefited me, nor a single moment in which being a POC has not harmed my friends and other people.

Just, you know. Public service announcement.

I was raised by a rather progressive mother. She may not be very feminist on the surface (she has issues separating radical misandry from the word "feminism", I don't know why) but the core values are there and she instilled them early in me and my brother, which is why even when my brother and I are fighting like rabid raccoons, when we find ourselves in certain situations, we are in complete synchronicity.

Anyway, I have a story relevant to this topic that I think you guys will appreciate. It happened about seven or eight years ago during a party my brother hosted at our place while my mother and her boyfriend were on vacation.

I live in South America, and while I know that the stereotype is "brown skinned", in case some of you don't know, there are people who would qualify, on sight, as essentially "white"--especially in Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, Nicaragua, and others.

In my country, racially charged and racist language is a lot more prevalent and a lot harder to combat (we don't have the history the U.S. does) so we're used to hearing certain things. And while the word "nigger" isn't used at all (aside from perhaps people commenting on its use in the U.S.) there are other colorful phrases that mean essentially the same thing when referring to darker-skinned people.

I'm hanging out with my friend at this party--we're substantially older than the majority of the people there since they're all friends of my 10-years-younger brother, but we're having a good time, drinking, etc. And then someone says the equivalent of "niggers". He wasn't actually calling anyone present that, he was talking about "a certain type of people". (i.e. people with brown-skin, which as you may suspect quite correctly, form the majority of the lower class, like, you know, in most places.) (Yes, you get people of dark skin using the same terminology, and not in the way African-Americans have appropriated "niggah", but rather in actual insult, it's mind-bloggling.)

I told him not to say that. I even said "please". His argument as to why he should be allowed to say it is was tantamount to "I was talking about their way of thought, not their skin color" (another variant: "I was talking about them being 'niggers of the soul' not, you know, their skin color"). Suffice to say this didn't endear me to him any, and I told him I didn't care--just stop. I'm a teacher--I like to educate if at all possible--but I was also relaxing and frankly I didn't have the desire to argue about it with an idiot--but then other people started: some defended him (usually citing cultural norms and a lack of cultural understanding, which is a shit argument) and some took my side.

Eventually, he got sick of getting schooled and when my brother--who was clueless as to this--walked by, the guy called him over and told him I was giving him a hard time. (My brother was holding a dude by the arm like he was going to use him to swing at a baseball, and the dude was holding his own head with one hand, so keep that in mind for the next part of the story). He didn't know I was his brother. He didn't know he was in my home. He explained what happened in the most favorable light (for himself) that he could and my brother grabbed him by the arm with his free hand, asked me to help with the other guy too, and together we escorted them right the fuck out.

Turns out the other guy (remember I told you to keep him in mind?) had pinned the door to the bathroom with a girl inside and was telling her he'd let her out if she let him take a picture of her bent over with her skirt pulled up. My brother had to pee and when he came around and heard the dude insisting, he knocked the guy's head into the doorframe and dragged him off.

We lived across the street from a police station. Racist Douchebag didn't get more than a boot from our house, but the other guy got charges, once we got one of the cops to cross the street and take the girl's statement.

Moral of the story is: surround yourself with people who will back you up when you are defending people, because even when you think you know the people you invite into your home, that's not a given. And raise your kids right--I have a ton of faults, but allowing that sort of shit in my vicinity, much less in my home, isn't one of them.

I hope @mietze's kids (and any that any of you have) never have that happen at a party they go to or that they host--but I hope if it does, they have the support of others so that they are able to excise these sorts of people summarily and without remorse.

This is your World. Your world holds unspeakable things. You may not see them, lurking in the shadow; you may not hear them, prowling in the woods; you may not sense them, hidden between the gears of reality; but there are things that go bump in the night, and they watch you, waiting. Some will treat you as food; others will treat you as prey; still others will steal the most fundamental parts of your being.

Unless you're one of them. Vampire. Werewolf. Demon. You lurk and either eek out an existence in the fringes of humanity or take it by the throat and attempt to rule it. Either way, you're certainly not human anymore--some of you never were. This is your world too.

Eldritch is a cooperative, semi-improvisational roleplaying setting for the World of Darkness, by Onyx Path. It supports the first edition of Demon: The Descent, and the second editions of Vampire: The Requiem, and Werewolf: The Forsaken, in addition to their sub-templates and your basic Mortals (including Psychics). Eldritch is an attempt to create a story- and character-driven game that explores the themes of each of these games not only by themselves but also in their interaction with each other. It is a full-inclusion, cross-over-friendly game.

There will be politics. There will be murder. There will be espionage. There will be lust and fear; terror and savagery; adventure and techgnosticism. Find a place in our city and tell your story while helping us tell ours. Remember: no character exists in a vacuum, and you have the power to change this world.

You should climb up on your ego and jump alllllllll the way down to your IQ.

@Tyche said in RL Anger:

Then I learned that the only way I could be helpful was to participate in a great societal revolution to
revamp and overturn western civilization and the patriarchy.
Sorry I'm not really on board for all that.

Sucks to be you.

I do have some advice though.
If you find yourself playing tabletop role-playing games with creeps.
Go find another gaming group or start your own.

Or maybe, if there are people who aren't creeps at the table, the creeps could leave. That would be swell.

On a bright note there is great news for feminists today.
I read we're going to put a gun-toting evangelical Christian Republican woman on the twenty dollar bill.
Yeah!

All right, let's break this down.

Harriet Tubman toted guns. What the fuck do you expect a woman fighting to free hundreds of slaves to tote? A broomstick? Do you really believe that revolution and the fight for civil liberties is won by walking around with your hands in the air saying "please let us go / give us rights, we promise we ain't gonna misuse them [like you do]?"

Harriet Tubman was an evangelical Christian. So what? I'm a communist. I don't actually like religion, and I especially don't like the church, but that doesn't mean I automatically brand everyone who believes in god and preaches as someone incapable of doing good things. Could I, and would I, criticize her beliefs? Of course. But I would do it respectfully and more importantly separately from her achievements as a civil rights activist and successful abolitionist, and finally, I would do so in context, given her upbringing and what surrounded her. For fuck's sake the woman fought against slavery at a time when that's pretty much all her people knew--the concept of God being righteous and having her back was probably one of the only things that kept her going.

Harriet Tubman was a Republican. I'm not bothering to look up if this is accurate. I will do you a solid and take it at face value. Even so, she was born in 1822 and died in 1913. The Republican and Democratic parties switch sides [i.e. the (Democratic) party of small government became the party of big government, and the (Republican) party of big government became rhetorically committed to curbing federal power] somewhere between the late 1860s and 1936. So essentially, you're saying she was part of a transitioning party. Given her ideals and, more importantly, her actions, I am confident in saying that I think Tubman would have been a modern Democrat, if we go as far as to claim she'd join either party, which I'm not sure she would. She joined the more liberal party during a time in which she needed support to achieve her abolitionist goals. (In contrast, Andrew Jackson is one of the founders of the original Democratic Party, which as we've covered, had the values of the current Republican party at the time. So your actual argument, if applied within context, works against the previous face of the $20 bill.)

Now sit down and shut the fuck up, you're embarrassing yourself.

@stabeest said in Apology to Darinelle:

@saosmash Goddamn this. It feels really shitty to be informed by a 'friend' that someone has been talking shit about you. Most of them try to couch it in the whole 'I just want to work things out between you.'

No. You want to stir the pot. If someone has an issue with me or the way I do things, I expect them to come to me about it if this is truly important to them and it wasn't just a moment of venting out of frustration. If it is serious enough to need a resolution, they need to come to me themselves. If it's not, then I don't need to hear about every time I irritate someone and they needed a moment to bitch.

I knew someone who would constantly bitch about someone else to me. It was all the time. Every day. Eventually I told them if they didn't stop and go hash it out with the other person I was just going to stop talking to them.

It didn't stop.

We don't talk anymore.

I got a kitty.

Everyone say hello to Ulthar.

@GreenFlashlight said in Avatar / Korra game considerations:

If the Avatar is unplayable, then I don't really care what they're doing, but I do wonder how canon purists will react to the Avatar being removed from canon. It might save more effort to just say "oh the world's pretty much fine so the Avatar is off doing Avatar stuff and will be back if Sephiroth or whoever pops up."

Well, that's why I suggested it be set after Korra (or an Avatar) has just died. It answers every question: why can't anyone, even staff, play the Avatar? Because they are a baby. What is the Avatar doing? Probably eating their own boogers.

@arkandel said in Good TV:

Not quite "TV" per se, but...

... Netflix sure seems to be going down fast. Many people are hoisting their colors and sailing the high seas in response to the streaming services fragmenting so much that subscribers are asked to join several of them to keep up.

What's your take on it?

I mean, isn't this the market regulating itself?

And this is why my one character has Composure 8 and Influence 8.

Wait.

Did I do it wrong.

No, unless the general culture of the game is inclined towards not.

That is to say, if you go on a game and everyone is super chill with stats and no one has gone super hard into one of them, then it's pretty poor form to immediately chargen with Melee 1 Billion.

Conversely, if you join a game where everyone is trying to maximize their stats, you're gonna have a bad time come dice time if you don't (which has happened to me occasionally).

Of course there is no game in which these extremes are true; there's always a mix, but tendencies are pretty easy to find, especially if you have access to other people's sheets to check.

@silverfox said in Good TV:

I think a lot of the 'fuck this' from teachers comes from the fact that we feel under attack already. The fuss about CRT, indoctrination, banning books, etc has REALLY had an impact on teacher morale. We have 2 teachers of 15+ years experience getting out of education because of the environment. (Love kids, like the school, but it is everything ELSE getting to them.)

So to see incompetence displayed can absolutely feel like it is going to give even more power to those attempting to destroy public education.

I haven't seen this show, but as an educator, I don't often have trouble watching it. That said, what silverfox said is true; it does often feel like making fun of teachers and educators is often 'punching down'.

@arkandel said in Good or New Movies Review:

@coin It also managed very well (in my opinion) to avoid the 'comic book prose' of a direct conversion from the source material coming off as a bit forced. For example I found Watchmen to suffer from that a bit.

But The Batman somehow avoided doing that. It sounded seemed so cool.

I don't think I need spoilers for this as the scene is in the trailer, but the part at the end of the car chase with the Penguin was just fucking incredible. On its own it's easily on par with the 'oh shit' moments like Cap picking up Mjolnir, Thor's arrival in Wakanda, etc. Yet it was just a normal human dude walking out of a car.

I don't think Watchmen suffered from the narration, myself. But I loved loved the way they did it in The Batman. and he's so moody, lol, I loved it.

The car chase is fucking fantastic, yes.

What I liked best is what I found lacking in Joker.

While Joker was a movie based on a comic book that was trying with wild desperation to divorce itself from its comic book roots and be seen as "respectable", The Batman leans into certain aspects of the comic books, the most impactful of which is Batman's narration during the film which can with I suspect zero editing be put word for word in tiny little narration boxes on a comic book and they would fit in perfectly, their language the flowery, sometimes cliched prose of comic book narration we've all grown accustomed to.

That, and the fucking score.

Holy fuck the score.

@tinuviel said in GMs and Players:

@coin said in GMs and Players:

@tinuviel said in GMs and Players:

For example, if someone calls me mean things I'd probably handle that much better than another person. So what I'd consider abuse shouldn't be the totality of things when a player complains to me about an event.

Poopyhead.

***Navy Seal Copypasta***

click to show

What the fuck did you just fucking say about me, you little bitch? I’ll have you know I graduated top of my class in the Navy Seals, and I’ve been involved in numerous secret raids on Al-Quaeda, and I have over 300 confirmed kills.

I am trained in gorilla warfare and I’m the top sniper in the entire US armed forces. You are nothing to me but just another target. I will wipe you the fuck out with precision the likes of which has never been seen before on this Earth, mark my fucking words.

You think you can get away with saying that shit to me over the Internet? Think again, fucker. As we speak I am contacting my secret network of spies across the USA and your IP is being traced right now so you better prepare for the storm, maggot. The storm that wipes out the pathetic little thing you call your life. You’re fucking dead, kid. I can be anywhere, anytime, and I can kill you in over seven hundred ways, and that’s just with my bare hands.

Not only am I extensively trained in unarmed combat, but I have access to the entire arsenal of the United States Marine Corps and I will use it to its full extent to wipe your miserable ass off the face of the continent, you little shit. If only you could have known what unholy retribution your little “clever” comment was about to bring down upon you, maybe you would have held your fucking tongue.

But you couldn’t, you didn’t, and now you’re paying the price, you goddamn idiot. I will shit fury all over you and you will drown in it.

You’re fucking dead, kiddo.

I never click on spoilers.

@tnp said in GMs and Players:

@coin said in GMs and Players:

@tinuviel said in GMs and Players:

For example, if someone calls me mean things I'd probably handle that much better than another person. So what I'd consider abuse shouldn't be the totality of things when a player complains to me about an event.

Poopyhead.

And, of course, one has to consider the source as well.

POOPYHEAD.

@tinuviel said in GMs and Players:

For example, if someone calls me mean things I'd probably handle that much better than another person. So what I'd consider abuse shouldn't be the totality of things when a player complains to me about an event.

Poopyhead.

@arkandel said in Good TV:

Ray Stevenson is Admiral Thrawn.

Uh.

"As first reported by our sister site The Hollywood Reporter, Stevenson will play a villainous admiral, but not Thrawn. Dutch Danish actor Lars Mikkelsen (Borgen, House of Cards) voiced Thrawn in Star Wars: Rebels."

Not unless they're trying to pull a switch, buddy.