And when I asked if people were willing to put a notice like that in theme, the reply was variations on 'No'.
But fuck it, apparently I'm annoying people by continuing to talk about this, so I'll shut up.
If nothing else it's been instructive about whose games I'd be a bad fit for. 
It's the same thing, though, isn't it? If Player A has the right and expectation that her character can be a racist asshole to Player B's character and player B doesn't have the expectation that they can play without it, then Player B is being hit with unpleasant but realistic IC situations over which they have no control with a basis in 'this is history'.
So, following that logic, it would seem to me that Player A should also have the chance of that kind of situation being dropped on them. Because, you know, history.
@auspice I am not trying to stir shit. I am, I will admit, disagreeing with the majority of the people I'm talking to here on this topic.
If that's a problem and unwelcome, I will be happy to close my user account here and go away.
I had rather assumed that this wasn't the old WORA and that constructive conversation is allowed and welcomed, even when people don't (and won't) agree. If not, obviously I'm in the wrong place.
Nope. Please don't put words in my mouth.
I didn't say 'bad things happening' equals a fun tax. Bad things happen to my characters all the time and that's fine. That's plot. BUT this specific category of bad thing, that the majority of players don't have to deal with shouldn't be an extra hurdle to my fun.
@faraday said in How should IC discrimination be handled?:
That seems kind of extreme. Just because I, as staff, wouldn't inflict Random Typhoid or Random Fires or Random Murder or Random Racism on somebody doesn't mean that typhoid and fires and murder and racism don't exist in the theme.
Okay, so why is bigotry different in that a player should have to put up with it on a non-consensual basis? If your character can't get sick without consent, or can't have their IC house burn down without consent, what makes it okay for the players of those characters to have to sit through abusive language and situations based on race, orientation, etc?
I didn't say it should be a huge chance. But it should be there. If the historically accurate misery is going to rain, it should rain on everybody, right?
@lithium Nowhere did I say I was attempting to enforce anything. Anywhere.
Am I correct in understanding that you basically believe that if minority or queer people don't want to deal with abuse, they shouldn't play any game they don't run?
I am still not arguing that those story lines shouldn't exist. And I'm still not even engaging in the terrible troubles of imaginary minorities.
As always, my point is, was and probably always will be that players should be allowed to opt out of dealing with slurs and abuse when they hit too close to home.
I did however, expand that point to suggest that you're using historical realism as an excuse to allow abuse, it's not actually ethical to do so unless you insure that every character is hit by awful stuff out of player control and preferably randomly.
That's pretty much it on my part.
@faraday said in How should IC discrimination be handled?:
So if that's the consensus, and modern/sci-fi themes don't generally have the historical baggage of dumb laws that have since been overturned (women can't own property, interracial marriages are illegal, etc.) ... what exactly are the problems you're seeing in WoD/modern settings?
My problems with WoD games aside (and that's a mountain off to the side), I notice a fairly solid helping of casual isms that get shrugged off by staff and players, routinely. Hell, even in this discussion, it was dismissed as not a problem compared to X, where X is something only tangentially or marginally related.
Let me be upfront about my biases here. I'm an old queer. Not stonewall old, but I lost friends to AIDS when it was still a scary unknown. I even have the so cliched that nobody would use it backstory about being gay and coming from a religious, conservative family. So when I say that I've had a bellyful of hearing anti-gay slurs and such, please believe that's not some social justice warrior posturing. I've bled while people hurled those words. Literally.
I don't find it unreasonable to ask to NOT see them while I'm pretending to be a werewolf or something.
And in historic settings, what do you suggest? Just handwaving completely and having nobody be allowed to bat an eye at a female gunslinger or an African American sheriff, even in eras where, say, iRL women weren't allowed to wear pants and slavery was still a thing?
Hey, if everybody is going to be equally miserable, sure. So put in that random disease dropper that tells a random character every so often that their character is dying of typhoid or tuberculosis or syphilis. Bring on the weather effects that knock down a player's IC business or farm, completely at random.
But if you're not going to do that, singling out players for a fun tax on their play in the name of realism isn't realistic. Or rather, it's applying your 'realism' in such a way that you are making a statement about who is or isn't welcome on your game, even if you don't mean to make it.
@apos said in How should IC discrimination be handled?:
@arkandel said in How should IC discrimination be handled?:
@apos said in How should IC discrimination be handled?:
Other PCs think that the reason it's not a slap on the wrist is due to homophobia, and want the Sheriff to sweep it under the rug. What should he do?
Opinions on what the Sheriff should do may vary, and for good reason.
What I want to see is the Sheriff's player not being forced into an IC action due to OOC reasons, such as reactions by other players. Especially if staff doesn't give him a direction and leaves the player to face the backlash.
There's not a lot of good options for that staff side, even. For example, a leader does something bold/risky. At what point is dogpiling on it inappropriate? If you have 60 characters that all have Strong Feelings about it, that player is going to be well and truly miserable by scene #7 of someone bringing up how they Strongly They Disagree, let alone scene #60. Or do you just tell people they aren't allowed to RP about something? Do you then oocly punish players that persist, even if they just don't got the memo, or make some passing reference to a storyline that has an IC authority figure about to quit the game?
Let me be blunt, @Collective - it is VASTLY more common to use edgy themes as an excuse to beat up IC authority figures than it is to bully PCs of that type.
Again, with all due respect, I assure you that those of us who don't feel like we should have to make our characters straight or white or male in games if we don't want to deal with abuse aren't being 'edgy'.
@faraday said in How should IC discrimination be handled?:
But it's nonetheless a problem that will crop up and can easily lead to more subtle forms of IC nastiness.
To go back to my Sunday school days, back in the Precambrian era, 'Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.'
In other words, if the cost of limiting overt abuse is the possibility of covert abuse, I think I'd take that gamble.
@apos Even in real life, even in the old west, law enforcement officials tell people things aren't/weren't worth their time and effort.
With no disrespect intended, assuming the folks involved weren't going at it in public (which is inappropriate in pretty much every MU that isn't sex oriented), then if the sheriff doesn't have more important things to do with their time, then there would seem, to me, to be a major failure on the part of the plot staff and players.
And I guess this illustrates what I find so frustrating talking to gamers about topics like this. Because even in an old west setting, I find few people who will set up a typhoid and smallpox plague generator that would strike indiscriminately but everybody wants to make sure that characters can express their disapproval of those who aren't just like the majority of the people playing characters.
This isn't me calling out a hypothetical game runner as being a bigot, by the way. I'm not saying that at all.
What I am saying is that we, all of us, have a cultural bias towards flinging crap at the people who less empowered in our society and feeling that the ability, even a right to do so, is natural and okay, even in our shared play time.
@faraday said in How should IC discrimination be handled?:
@collective No, I was trying to say it was a combination of rating and theme.
Ah. Fair enough. Again, thank you for clarifying that.
I have to admit, I sure as hell wouldn't want to play on a game where the theme and setting made that kind of behavior appropriate, but I suppose that kind of game has some merit for some folks.
If I understand you here, you're essentially saying that just telling people your game has an R-rating is sufficient for them to understand that ICly speaking, it's fair game on minorities?
I don't recall a lot of people, if any people, even the villains, calling Wonder Woman a whore, bitch, slut, etc, in that movie. And yet the period sexism was portrayed quite nicely.
@apos said in How should IC discrimination be handled?:
@collective said in How should IC discrimination be handled?:
So, I'm curious. What's your threshold for the amount of IC abuse that's okay and doesn't need a disclaimer? I thought we were at the point in the discussion where folks were saying that as long as everything is IC, we're all good?
When I think that it is not exceedingly unlikely someone would reasonably encounter it IC.
Okay, this is what I'm getting at. Let me approach it from another angle, if you'll be patient with me on this.
Is there such a thing as a character that you find too bigoted for the good of the game? Even assuming the player is lily-pure and has absolutely none of the baggage of the character she's portraying, is there a limit to how nasty and abusive, entirely in character, you'd allow?
Thank you for the honest and enlightening reply.
So, I'm curious. What's your threshold for the amount of IC abuse that's okay and doesn't need a disclaimer? I thought we were at the point in the discussion where folks were saying that as long as everything is IC, we're all good?