@coin Back in the days of Everquest (I played on an RP server), a friend of mine and I did this as a flame war on our server's EZBoard (aaaahahahahaaha) that turned into 30+ pages of how I was REALLY A MAN AND JUST PRETENDING TO BE A WOMAN ON THE INTERNETZ.
He used to call me as he'd write his latest flame of me and we'd laugh about it.Oh, the good ol' days.
I want to upvote this whole thread. All of it. Not to sound patronizing, because I do have my own mental health issues with which I struggle (which remain mostly undiagnosed so I don't usually talk about them) - but because it's nice to see people in a shared community coming together to listen and be, well - a community. There's a lot of cesspools and personal hells on the internet (and everywhere else) so it's nice to see people being cool and using it to actually connect and help each other. And it's pretty great to see people in any sort of community recognizing they need help and getting the help they need without shame, because there's not a one of us who hasn't needed help at one point or another. So anyway. Upvotes all around and thanks for being a bright spot in my day.
Watching the arc over time of some characters who started in really shitty places and have rolled with the punches, and consequences, and all of that to build something really freaking great. I love me a good redemption arc, especially when it's not a rushed sort of thing and happens over the course of months or even years, and just drags a bunch of people along for the ride.
Love.
It.
So.
Much.
@arkandel said in Forgiveness in Mushing:
It's like going to a gym worrying everyone will think you're an out of shape newbie. They won't, simply because they're busy staring at themselves in the mirror. The same applies to gaming - as long as they don't shit the bed completely most people are going to be just fine.
SO MUCH THIS.
Most days I can't remember who players used to play, you'll have to tell me 600 times. The ones that stick in my memory were the really awesome or really toxic players, but even then that's through a filter of my own experiences, not usually the hobby as a whole.
So as any community grows, there is a moment where they (hopefully) become protective of the health of the community as a whole. And when that happens, those who do damage to that community as a whole, either through behavior that affects everyone or through behavior that is so egregious toward a few that it cannot be allowed to stand, are generally banned/banished and sent on their way.
As I said regarding the first person I ever banned in any moderator position ever - the beauty of the internet is that there will always be different communities and different places. Which is to say that when you've done something the community considers heinous enough to show you the door, you don't have to go home, but you can't stay here.
Hopefully in the next place that person will grow and become someone better. Or get shown the door. Or fall in with people who don't care about a behavior that was, for this community, problematic/toxic/awful. There are a hell of a lot of people on the internet. Showing someone the door in an online community isn't sentencing them to a lifetime of misery, even if we would like to believe that being cut off from our amazing, awesome selves is THE ULTIMATE DOOM. It's just sending them to a different place, where hopefully they'll be less of an asshole.
Watching players make terrible, terrible choices that are going to send everything into a complete tailspin, even though they should rationally know better (and in many cases do).
If everyone is perfect all the time, the story is far less interesting, but hey - we live in interesting times.
EVERYTHING IS HORRIBLE I AM UNDER 1.0.
Oh wait. I don't care. I should post more and lurk less or something, but w/e. I SAID I DON'T CARE! <sobs>
Also - those players who take time to give feedback to the GMs in a way that isn't hideous and hateful. Even when it's constructive criticism. Those players who are themselves experienced GMs and see a frustrating situation, and reach out to the GM with a quiet - "hey, I know this is hard and thanks for doing it, can I help in any way?"
Even when the answer is no, I am always grateful as shit for players who do things like this while I'm GMing. I get to tell stories with some amazing people, y'all.
BLEHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.
I hope she was the most qualified but if she WAS the most qualified and you DO hire her I do not envy the conversation you'll have to have with whoever that idiot was.
@faceless said in MU Things I Love:
When you find that music that just helps you write in a scene. Or any scenes, really. At present I listen to the soundtrack for Final Fantasy Tactics. It just helps me hone in and focus. It's always nice when you hit that point where you just feel like you've hit your stride in a scene, a given week, month, or whatever.
My Halloween event this year (I always try to make the time to do one really creepy, non-metaplot-y scene around Halloween) was written to this song. Which I listened to on repeat throughout the scene.
It was as creepy as you would think. I totally grok.
@loke said in Reasons why you quit a game...:
Do you think there was a way for those games to identify and get rid of those staffers more quickly or mitigate the damage they could cause while investigating?
I don't want to dictate or lead your response, but I've often wondered if more effort/focus towards staff principles (and accountability) would help mitigate a lot of this. I'm thinking of an atmosphere where staff that come on basically know they have to adhere to certain tenets and they are taken seriously by all staff brought on board. A cultural alignment.
So I don't know a single MU out there that defines its guiding staff principles in any way other than "we aim to make fun for our players, have a great game, and behave ethically." Every staffer always knows this.
When staffers fall into cheating and lack of ethics to the point that it ruins the game, it's not because there's not a cultural alignment or a list of ethical tenets - it's that when staffers fail, other staffers either don't call them on it/give them the boot, or can't do it because the unethical staffers have power over them.
Lack of correction of unethical staffers is what kills games. Not a lack of ethical staff principles.
Idris Elba - Either. Both. All.
Maggie Smith - Period Piece Face.
Joan Cusak - Modern Face.
Portia on Firan. She had history, in that her mother had schemed and her dad was a war hero and was awesome, and there were all these shenanigans that went on so long before she even existed that by the time she was played she had a legit backstory and travails, man. Obstacles to overcome. I loved overcoming them, one by one - meeting her goals, letting the RP shape her, reaching out and shaping those around me. My favorite moment (aside from duck gifting shenanigans) was when, a year and a half AFTER SHE WAS DEAD, a plan I'd put in place to obfuscate something and lay the blame on someone else TOTALLY WORKED without me having to lift a finger about it. Glorious.
@deadculture said in The limits of IC/OOC responsibility:
@darinelle I don't think giving people OOC grief is fun or fair in any way; naturally, people will talk about someone else behind their backs and there's nothing that can be done about it, but people should have the sense to at the very least not freak out at the PC two months after the fact unless they were directly affected and aren't given a chance to.
Grumble, talk into your drink, look away when she enters the room, sure, but you don't need to walk up and give her shit over a difficult decision after what's an eternity in MUSH terms.
But yeah, there's a point where 'Oh it's just my character giving hers shit' stops being that and starts being undeserved and unfair.
It's not just OOC.
There can be a multitude of valid IC reasons to dislike a character. That doesn't mean you have to demand to have a scene with them to just give them hate. Just - hate them. My character hates lots of people. LOTS OF PEOPLE. I am cold to them in group scenes or ignore them. And... I have yet to message any of them saying "hey, let's talk" and then turned that into "I hate you and here are all my valid reasons why."
That's what I mean when I say "have some consideration for the player, even if my character hates theirs for valid reasons."
@deadculture I mean I always /try/ to help. Sometimes it's just not possible.
How to instantly disengage me:
How to instantly engage me:
I am apparently a huge lore geek (I'll pause while y'all try to hold back your surprise) so the way I write my theories is generally with color-coded paragraph headings. If you read one of my theories, there are 3-4 lines with paragraphs that support each one, so you can easily scan a theory and see what it's about quickly, and then bore in for more detail.
I suspect that would work if we included some of that formatting in the description rather than just wall of text (which totally takes formatting things) but in the realm of "what we need coded" I'm not sure how high it is on the priority list, tbh.
@tinuviel Arx.
And yes.
All the time.
I could list ten people without blinking twice who roll with the punches, take setbacks as an opportunity to learn, and keep growing as characters without bitching OOCly or accusing GMs of favoritism or arranging things OOCly to make it better. They just keep on truckin'.
It's really, really nice.
@tinuviel I mean, I didn't require anything and he and I haven't spoken in private.
I think if he'd sent me this apology in private I'd have told him to fuck right the hell off. But he could have put it in the thread - he did, in fact, put an apology in the thread. I suspect the public backlash was such that he felt a separate topic was warranted.
Attacking someone directly and publicly does require a public apology. At least in my (admittedly old-fashioned) opinion. It didn't need a thread of its own though.
@arkandel said in What drew you to MU*?:
@mietze said in What drew you to MU*?:
What keeps me in: still the people.
Let's test this. Let's say all of General Your's friends retired tonight; there are still MUSHes around but they're all ran and played by strangers.
Do you start over? Go and make new friends? Or would it be likely you'd float away from the hobby?
I started over already once, I CAN DO IT AGAIN.
Which is to say, a lot of the people I RP with regularly I didn't RP with in other games - and while I staff with my chosen family on Arx I don't get to RP with them often. But I started in Firan, went to TR without knowing anyone, met a bunch of great people there, and then came to Arx.
Before that I was on a couple PbP sites and that was fine too. For me, this hobby is about collaborative storytelling, and as long as I can find places to do that (and the time to do it as well), that's what I'll do.
2.5-3 hrs maximum, though some can run shorter and there are a few people where it can run much longer if we want it to (or if we're RPing at work and have lots of slow breaks).
If I GM a scene that runs longer than that I generally break it into 2 nights - and sometimes yes, it just takes that long to give players meaningful choices that change what happens. Because I can't come up with MY pose until you come up with YOURS. But that I don't mind, especially when players are doing interesting things.