Posts made by Collective

Just out of curiosity (and yes, I know this is a question that will ruffle feathers. Bear me with a moment):

How willing are you to put a notice on, say, your log-in screen and/or very prominently in your OOC rooms/Character Generation rooms that says something like, 'By playing here, you agree to deal with as many racist, homophobic, sexist and other slurs as your fellow players feel like slinging as long as that slinging stays IC.'

Letting folks know, up front, what they can expect, rather than have it happen and then say, 'Well, that's a consequence of the theme or setting, you should have guessed'.

If you're not willing to post a notice like that, why?

If the answer is 'it might scare people off' then I would, politely and without any accusation or freighting, suggest that maybe, on some level, people might already feel like this kind of behavior is or can be problematic, rather than the non-issue that the consensus seems to be leaning towards.

@faraday said in How should IC discrimination be handled?l

As for the fictional minorities? Nobody is trying to drag you onto the "Freedom for Taurons" bandwagon here. That's absurd. But it is equally absurd to dismiss the potentially-hurtful implications of the "Space British" heaping crap onto the "Space Irish" under a paper-thin veil of changing the names (to "Hibernians", because that makes it so much better). Is it as bad as seeing racial slurs hurled at fictional people like yourself? No. But that doesn't make it fun for everyone either.

Again, this is not an attack but a genuine question: Why do RP that isn't fun? If a situation makes me OOCLY miserable, I don't pursue that IC situation. Conversely, there have been plenty of times where my character is miserable but I'm having fun.

I'm not sure why somebody would want to make themselves unhappy in real life for the sake of RP verisimilitude. I'm not sure why they'd expect others to do that, either. RP with consequences, absolutely. RP where your character suffers or dies, yeah. That's the story sometimes. But RP where you get depressed over the abuse a character is taking? Why deal with that? There is enough pain and misery in the world without assuming fictional burdens.

As for opting out being a get out of jail free card, that would be on staff to stop. The difference between a reasonable use of a red card and an unreasonable one is usually pretty clear cut in my experience. Also, a person who abuses a system like that will soon find themselves lacking in RP partners.

I feel like a lot of this thread has been an exercise in trying to overly formalize what should be an organic and simple guideline. That isn't an attack, it's just an observation. Gamers like one size fits all rules because those are easy to grasp and easy to game. Rather than get mired in a thousand hypothetical situations I'm talking about a general ethos that can be applied.

Yes, it requires a little maturity and good will on the part of everybody involved, but I don't think the MU bar is so low that's impossible yet.

@faraday

I honestly don't care about imaginary minorities.

Nobody is going to come home after work, desperate to relax and have a little fun and have to deal with RP that hits a little too close to home, because like their character, they too are a Tauron, a werewolf or an elf.

On the other hand, I don't think it's unreasonable to hit the 'nope' button when a person who is black, gay or trans sits down and sees slurs that affect them and their real, lived experience scrolling across the screen.

Am I saying all RP with those elements is bad? Nope. Am I saying nobody should be allowed to pursue those story lines and attitudes? Nope.

All I am saying is that this one of those cases where RPing that stuff out should be consensual and not assumed.

That's literally it. All umpteen billion posts I've made in this thread saying exactly and only that.

And I still haven't seen anybody answer why the 'right' to pursue that RP unfettered is more important that somebody else's fun.

@faraday said in How should IC discrimination be handled?:

@ganymede said in How should IC discrimination be handled?:

I may be misreading things, but I think you've got the gist of the policy.

I can understand the policy as it applies to 'if someone asks you not to type a slur on screen, please respect that'. Where I'm hazy on is how you opt-out of the more subtle stuff, like the examples I described.

@collective said in How should IC discrimination be handled?:

@faraday Show me a real life BSG minority and I'll worry about the question.

Look I was trying to use a hypothetical example to avoid offending anyone but I really do think you're smart enough to insert (oppressive RL group A) for Caprican and (oppressed RL group B) for Tauron and realize that the question goes beyond pretendy made up minorities.

No offense, but if I rose to that bait, there would be fifty people screaming that I want to destroy their elf hate-boners. Which is stupid. I am not commenting on imaginary races and peoples.

Now, as for real people, it's pretty simple. I laid it out above.

Player One decides to unload with his character's hate fest, ICly.

Player Two asks that they not cover that RP ground. Like fading to black for a sex scene, not RPing torture, etc. A practice already widely accepted in MUs.

Player One politely accepts that or they don't have a scene.

No fuss, no muss, nobody gets hurt. The only change is that nobody is expected to participate in RP that they find hurtful and stressful in RL.

And yes, before you bring the point up, somebody at some point will say, 'But my character losing is harmful to me in RL'. That's where a simple, common sense rule of thumb applies. A staff decision, like a million others a day.

Not having to sit through bigotry is not the same thing as avoiding consequence or conflict. It's just saying that particular conflict is not something you wish to pursue. Like people who don't do combat scenes, sex scenes or scenes with imaginary kids.

@ganymede said in How should IC discrimination be handled?:

@collective

You're avoiding the very clear, basic question.

Then make it a bit more clear for me, please, because I don't see where I've avoided answering anything.

@faraday Show me a real life BSG minority and I'll worry about the question.

I'm talking about discrimination that actually impacts real people, even through the medium of RP. Using the N word or F word hurts real people. Calling somebody a two-headed Mumblesquirt from Arcturis is only harmful to Mumblesquirt-kin.

I haven't met one yet, given that I just made it up, but this is the Internet.

There seems to be a pathological aversion to common sense standards when it comes to this stuff, for some reason. As in, 'don't worry about the made up species and races, they will be fine. Worry about the real people'.

@lithium said in How should IC discrimination be handled?:

@collective You're right, I misread. My apologies.

No worries.

@lithium I didn't.

I said it doesn't, unless there was a typo. Now I have to go look.

@sunny said in How should IC discrimination be handled?:

ETA: Is it really that big of an OOC ask for you (generic) to not use that particular word in reference to my PC?

To judge by this thread? Yes, yes it is.

And to be honest, it's pretty disappointing.

@lithium I respect your right to have an opinion.

And for the ... eighth time ... (thank god this is isn't a drinking game). At no point did I say that no game should have in-character discrimination. My 'hubris' is apparently in believing that no matter how many times I type that, people aren't going to read it as 'I want to take away your bigoted characters'.

I don't. I don't want to play with them, true. But I don't want to take them away, either.

As for 'logging off', I do. There are plenty of games where I've logged in and in the OOC room or the first scene or two IC I run into something I find distasteful. I go elsewhere. I don't make a fuss, don't change the game, I just go someplace else, on the theory that if that's the kind of fun they want to have, we're not going to along anyway.

@faraday With respect, the conversation (if you'd care to go back and review, you can confirm this independently) has ranged out in terms of setting. While the specific example in the first post was historic, the thread as a whole hasn't stayed in the past.

But by limiting the discussion to historical games, it is a lot easier to say 'Well, that's just unreasonable to even ask' when people ask why the slurs and discrimination are setting vital.

I am not saying you are trying to do that on purpose, but I am saying that in narrowing the scope back down in conjunction with your reservations about allowing players to opt out from bigotry, you are basically bolstering your point at the expense of ignoring a large part of the ongoing conversation.

Sometimes, in the pursuit of 'winning' a disagreement, we get a little tunnel vision. I do it myself.

@faraday I don't believe that either. For the ... seventh (I think) ... time in this conversation, I am not saying that games where discrimination is a theme should not exist. BUT, I think you should tell players that up front and give them an idea of how much abuse they can expect to take so they can decide if the game is worth their time.

As for opting-out, it is far more useful a tool in games that set in contemporary, fantasy or SF universes. Yes, it's of limited use in historic settings. But I feel like there is a little accidental goal post moving going on by suddenly limiting this discussion to hypothetical historical games.

@arkandel

Characters do not trump real people. Ever.

@faraday

Let me start this by saying that I don't think 'Theme' trumps human beings. I just don't. If a hypothetical game runner does, they should post a notice saying so in policy or character gen, so I can move along and find another game.

But in those cases, it's perfectly okay for a given character to not like another character. What's not okay is to seek that character out to abuse them, if they've asked you not to. That does mean that certain people who must play their character as being assholes to a certain class of character might not get a chance to RP with many people of that class.

That's okay. Both players and characters are probably going to benefit by that distance and lack of tension.

@faraday

How about this:

Player One (in character): I hate all those fucking fags. They should be hanged, all of them!

Player Two: (out of character) Um ... yeah. Can we not do that? I get a pretty big dose of that in real life and I don't have the energy to deal with it in my escapist fantasy time. Is that okay?

Player One: (out of character): Oh, okay.

Player One: (in character): But anyways, about that McGuffin you wanted polished. I got that right here.

Admittedly, that's expecting somebody to curb RPing something that hurts somebody else, but we already accept that as a part of the hobby in several other contexts. But the effort required to not make somebody's day worse is minimal.

@sunny

Wait, give me a couple of minutes and I can figure out a way to interpret that as you saying that senior citizens should be tossed into a wood chipper.

@pyrephox said in How should IC discrimination be handled?:

Okay, so here is where people are getting confused about whether you're advocating for all -isms to never be brought up in games:

@collective said in How should IC discrimination be handled?:

Here's the thing: Why is it hurtful to suggest that it's hurtful to use that kind of language and bring those situations into play? Why is calling a gay player's gay character a fag okay, but saying 'I have to wonder why you want the right to call somebody a fag' not okay?

Because right there? It looks an /awful/ lot like you're doing just that, and suggesting that the players themselves are hurting other players by wanting to play a fictional character who may express certain real world bigotries.

Also, I think it's time that we consider the other side of it, as well, in that every player is (probably) an adult who is presumably capable of making their own decisions, and not being forced to log into any particular game. Which means, really, that if you as a person are deeply wounded by a fictional character using a slur, then there's some responsibility to curate your own experiences, and either making it clear OOC that you're not interested in that sort of play experience, or choosing to not join, or to leave, games with settings that allow that.

Which sounds an awful like you're saying 'people like you don't belong on games I like'.

See? Everybody can read stuff into other people's words that they aren't saying with just enough doubt, if you squint, to make it work.

There is a difference, to me at least, between being a bigot and never having considered the possibility that maybe your 'ironic' or 'just RP' uses of loaded expressions or situations might come off as bigoted to somebody who doesn't know you and isn't inclined to give a total stranger a second chance.

I ask the questions because despite what some people are saying in the thread, there are people, lots and lots and lots of good, decent, friendly people, who just haven't examined behaviors that are hurtful to others, sometimes. Not because they are tiki torch carrying Nazi fucktards, but because they don't have the experience or the framework to see how somebody else could be hurt by something they see as playful or innocent.

It is not unexpected for anger to be some people's first reaction to being asked those questions. Or even to be hurt that anybody could possibly think they might be a bad person. Which is why, again and again and again and AGAIN, I've said I don't think that.

But I do think that talking this starts with admitting that there are contexts where those behaviors can be harmful and that it is not unreasonable to say and feel that.

@surreality said in How should IC discrimination be handled?:

@collective I should be out the door already, I really should, but I think you maybe need to look at that statement again.

It's very easy to infer what @faraday did, and I read it the same way when what is literally stated is that people are "arguing for the right to be vile and hurtful" by discussing any inclusion of these subjects at all, no matter what checks, balances, or protections might be in place.

That is a pretty serious accusation to make, and it's an accusation about people behind the screen and those having the discussion, not any hypothetical character they might be playing. Please re-read; I think you'll see why this is a problematic statement and why it's being interpreted in the way it is.

And on that note, I'm actually out the door, because work's a thing.

But ... surely you can't be saying that I should moderate my words because they can be painful to real people behind the screen?

I mean, do I need to playing a character on a MU to get immunity from that obvious bit of common decency?

Here's the thing: Why is it hurtful to suggest that it's hurtful to use that kind of language and bring those situations into play? Why is calling a gay player's gay character a fag okay, but saying 'I have to wonder why you want the right to call somebody a fag' not okay?

I'm having a problem with the disconnect in logic and empathy here. And this is, by the way, a textbook conversation about dealing with Others. One of the quickest responses is always, 'How can we make this about how uncomfortable it makes me when you talk about how uncomfortable I'm making you by doing/saying this thing?

For the record, I'm not accusing anyone of anything. I AM bringing up the obvious and fundamental questions that underlay the whole disagreement. And that is, yes, uncomfortable.

I am unironically sorry folks are having to think about this stuff. Apparently for the first time.

@faraday

If you meant that in good faith, then sure, I apologize.

That having been said, you were quoting me to illustrate a point I was not making and I do not believe could be reasonably inferred from the text. That's not kosher. Not even a little.