Posts made by Collective

@faraday

Please don't use me as your straw man. You don't need to interpret my words to fit your point. They are already written in plain English.

And my point, all along, has not been 'nobody should be allowed to do this'. It has been to ask, 'why is doing this more important than other people's comfort levels?' and 'why is it unreasonable to opt out of that kind of RP'?

If you can point at me asking for a ban of anything, please do so. If you can't, then don't twist my words to fit your biases and assumptions, please.

Thank you.

It's almost like gamers (be they tabletop, MMO, MUSHer or whatever) have a more readily identifiable minority of people with crippling social issues in their communities.

Almost.

Which isn't to say those people don't exist everywhere. Hell, my roomie's stories of the crazy casual racism on her favorite knitting forum are enough to make you swear off sweaters. Just that a hobby all about social interactions tends to put the bad stuff more on display than one that doesn't.

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

"I don't want to deal with this in my fun time" =/= "Nobody anywhere ever should have to deal with this in their fun time." I'm not really seeing anywhere in this thread where somebody said the latter, but it sure as hell seems like the former is being responded to as if it were the latter. Nor is anybody making the point saying anything about the people who like to RP this stuff, let alone that they're bad people.

I feel like this can't be quoted enough.

I honestly don't get why there is such resistance to the idea that it is okay to have your character opt out of dealing with racism/sexism/homophobia, etc that may hit you on a personal level.

Your character in a game might be sexually abused, but we don't make players RP that out.

Your character in a game might be eaten, but we don't make you play out vore. (For god's sake don't Google that, if you don't know. I sincerely wish I didn't.)

I'm not sure why just saying 'I'd prefer not to deal with slurs' is suddenly a giant attack on every gamer's sovereignty and fun. I don't assume that a person who has a fondness for bigoted characters is a bigot (I do assume that if they make a habit of making those characters that they are a troll, but not a bigot) but I do assume that a player who can't play a character without those traits, ever, is at the very least lacking in imagination.

It's not even unrealistic. Bigots have to go stealth all the time, even in the era of Trump, to keep their social status and employment secure.

@sunny But ... but ... immersion!

Look, if a guy playing a werewolf from a family of reality bending mages who are tied to a small town that happens to be the epicenter for global cthuloid madness can't have his character call somebody the N-word while ripping a hole between the real world and a spirit realm so they can go chase rogue ghosts, well, that's just not realistic.

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

What do you think?

I think I'm at a point in my life where I'm tired of shutting up and taking it while straight people, no matter how revered or well-meaning, find reasons why it's cool to call me a fag.

And yes, I know my characters are not me. But I also don't think it's entirely unreasonable to ask why the 'right' to be vile and hurtful to other people is so much more important than anyone else feeling welcome in a given environment. Because those words hit the players with the same force they hit the characters sometimes.

And yes, some queer person will be along in a minute to tell you it's okay. They don't mind. Good for them. I do. And despite what people want to say, that's not actually unreasonable.

I mean, I get it, free speech uber alles and all that. But while I'm sure people will jump in to tell me they are the ones who are the exception to the rule, I've never seen an Internet free speech warrior out protesting 'Free Speech Zones' or actual government censorship or anything like that.

They all want to fight for that simple right to call me a fag online, though.

I'm not ascribing any attitudes or attributes to them in real life. I don't know them. But I do know I wonder why this particular fight is so important and so enduring and why it needs to always be fought at somebody else's expense.

@sunny Yep. Like I called it earlier, it's a 'fun tax'.

If two people want to play vampires or space elves or something, one of them has to put up with real world prejudices because, well, in a world with supernatural horrors, multiple sentient species and other fantasy/SF weirdness it just breaks immersion to believe that people might not be harassed or hated because they aren't straight white dudes.

Because, um, reasons.

Also, let's face it, the level of pathetic involved with 'people are having fun, but my kind of fun, so let's ruin it for them' is, well, I can't imagine that kind of person having the mental wherewithal to actually play a text-based game.

I'm pretty sure that most of the people who post on MSB do so because they actually love MUs in general. It would be pretty freaking weird to go around being assholes to people doing the stuff we love, even if their version might not be to our tastes.

@faceless said in Regarding administration on MSB:

@bored said in Regarding administration on MSB:

It's also why I kind of focus on an alternative to Mildly Constructive, because that word seems to limit discussion

We have one. It's called the Hog Pit and you can call someone a deplorable piece of shit that you wish would have an unfortunate encounter with a Greyhound(the dog, not the bus) ....

Autoist.

@thatguythere said in Regarding administration on MSB:

@roz said in Regarding administration on MSB:

@thatguythere So I think it's really about the fact that the community exists but you personally don't engage with

Isn't that pretty much the same as my initial statement of "to me this place is not a community". You all can have all the community you want just don't expect me to call it that or care about that aspect.

@peasoupling said in How do you construct your characters?:

ely erudite, and sometimes quote Aristotle or an assortment of wholly outdated authors in reaction to the weirdness of the setting. Sure, the 17th century is the century of the scientific revolution, but we'll have none of that godless heretical nonsense, thank you.
I don't know why that just popped into my head, but it did, and now I am having a hard time doing anything other than struggle to work backwards from that into an actually playable character concept.
Other times I start with actual concepts, though.

I'm not even trying to go for a fully educated character, because when it comes to the humanities, the average well-educated person of that era is ... intimidatingly well read and grounded in languages and the classics. My BA doesn't stack up. Latin, Greek, rhetorical training, poetry, natural histories and the classic Greek lit and Roman political works, probably French and/or German if they have scholarly or literary pretensions and a working knowledge of their artistic traditions.

Yeah. I'm not qualified to play an Enlightenment era scholar.

This is just my two cents, but hey, I'm not shy.

We're all here because we love MUs and MUing. Or at least that's the healthiest reason to be here. So fostering an environment where we can have constructive, positive discussions about the thing we love is a good thing.

The Hog Pit and general nerd negativity is, well, it's a nasty side effect of nerd culture. Not pleasant, but not exactly without use, either. I rather like the approach of having a board that is generally expected to be constructive and thoughtful and being able to commute to Mos Eisley for my daily dose of scum and villainy.

What can I say? I read BBC World News and TMZ and I think there is a place under the same banner for both ends of the spectrum.

My thought is moderate the rest of MSB to the same degree as any nerd-focused fansite. Not quite to professional standards, but not anarchy either and let the Hog Pit be. And stop worrying about precedents and bylaws and pleasing a bunch of grumbling gamers. Because it's not going to happen. Make common sense rulings, rather than iron-clad rules, let context be key and ignore people who demand a pseudo-legal system for a site where we talk about pretending to be sexy undead teenagers with rainbow hair.

@arkandel

It's 50/50. If I'm not inspired, I have to do the same thing. And that isn't to say that my characters are fully formed before I ever start the app. Just that the general essence of who they are and two or three big, life-defining moments are clear in my head.

If the concept of the game doesn't inspire me, I generally look for a mechanical hook and then build a character around that, fleshing them out as we go.

If the game does inspire me, I throw the vague statement of 'I'd really like to play there' into the bottomless pit at the back of my conscious mind and start looking at/refreshing myself on source material.

For instance, T8S is interesting to me, so I dug out my copy of Under the Black Flag and downloaded a couple of Sabatini e-books. (Captain Blood and The Sea Hawk are out from under copyright and free!)

Now, after a couple of days, I've got the character's 'voice' in my head. I know why he went down to the wine dark sea. I know why he hoisted the black flag (well, decided it was better than dying) and who he was before he cast in his lot for a short, brutal but free life.

Now I just need to find a picture that suits the lean, small-framed, weaselly little man in my head and do a couple of test paragraphs. (I think he's going to be semi-literate, because he'd be the type to keep a journal.) When that's squared away, I'll app.

I logged in, tried it, had a couple of scenes and haven't been back.

The good: Staff absolutely will work with you on making sure your character fits their vision and integrating them into the game.

The bad: This is very much a game for the staff. Once I figured out my character was there as a background character to the interesting stuff happening to others, I decided not to stay.

That is NOT me calling this MU bad, by the way. I suspect that if I had the spoons to dive in and put in a few months as a spear carrier, my character would be upgraded from 'regular extra' to 'supporting cast'. But that's a lot of effort to be adjacent to somebody else's story, for me.

If somebody is willing to put in that time and work and OOC social-fu, I'm sure they would have a more rewarding experience.

Which is about as fair a review as I can give.

@TheOnceler Because we're playing Hollywood versions of the various faiths, Islam, Judaism, and Christianity share the same Faith mechanics (gaining Blessings and getting Guidance), but obviously different flavor. We're not at all opposed to having a few Jewish characters and even a Rabbi wandering the grid -- although a whole crew is probably a bit much for the setting.

Which is a shame, because Jewish freebooters are known for having pirate minyans.

(I'll show myself out.)

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

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

With respect, there are times when that's a burden that sucks for the people who have to put up with that same discrimination in real life. Why should some people get a pass into Narnia and others get hassled at customs?

Because no one can know for certain if someone seeks Narnia or not.

Which is why the first first thing I said when I mentioned this concept was 'I talk to my players'.

I have no problem with consensual exploration of those themes. I just think that using the 'hate is ON!' toggle in a gaming setting without exploring that as something other than the default puts an undo burden on some players.

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

If you get rid of every negative character trait for PCs you will wind up with bland, boring, nice little robots.

This is ... an interesting argument. Are you positing that other people should have to put up with slurs and hate (even when it's hate being lobbed at a fictional character, when that hate is put out there because the character is like you, gay or a woman or black, for example, it stings) for your entertainment?

Because that's kind of how that comes off. Screw the rest of you as long as some people get to enjoy a more conflict-heavy environment. (And that stuff is the laziest kind of conflict, by the way.)