@loakey said in Fear & Loathing Shout:
My great woe is that Sariel didn't have the chance to embrace Rocco. But at least he gets to be Ghoul of the Year 2017, since Sariel got disqualified.
The tiara she got was better, anyways.
Thanks to your character I managed to stomach through an entire season of Reign because of the PB.
Also, yes, it was a great tiara!
Hi.
I'm making a 7th Sea first edition MUSH (I hate 2nd edition and everyone I spoke with shared the same sentiments upon reading the preview booklet that was released), and I have chargen code about ninety percent ready. Unfortunately, my coder's been struck with a bad case of RLs and I'd like to have character generation, sheet and dice finished before June or July. The server is Rhost-based; I believe Advantages and Backgrounds are the only thing left in the actual sheet code, but we still need a die roller, and some other functional things.
The setting is an island that belongs to no particular nation, but with an abundance of Castillian influences since they were the ones who took it back from the Crescent Empire; it's pretty much an exile's haven, since people who have been chased out of all countries eventually find themselves there. On the outskirts, there is a village for outlaws as well; those deemed too dangerous to live in the island city the game is set.
I probably won't post my googledoc here, but send me PMs and I'll see about sending the theme document over. Thanks!
[EDIT: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1iiHTp7H-CaFGj3mPeH_fyg93eMCMheAMPtOXXXLK_wA/edit?usp=sharing This is the theme. If this document is not view only, please let me know. :)]
Yeah, one story I heard directly from him was how he was an Army Vet who saw the breaking down of the Wall of Berlin and then got his legs blown off by an IED in Iraq.
The other story that I heard from others is that he has cancer, et cetera. I don't think either story is true, and maybe he needs sympathy to feed into some sort of complex.
Either way, I have seen him use that manipulative behavior on staff to make them feel as though some other player was giving him a hard time, because she refused to cross boundaries with him. It wasn't good to see a friend slandered like that and when I tried to talk to staff about it, it was too late; they sided with him.
He also has this nasty habit of leaving a game as a set of characters, then using a VPN and coming back as another set.
@Thenomain said in Shadowrun: Modern:
@deadculture said in Shadowrun: Modern:
magic destroys the pessimism and opens a whole other slew of possibilities
While I did +1 because of this right here, I still wonder: What replaces it? Is it the chance that things can change? Does this require an oppressive world to change? Is Shadowrun (to coin a term I heard recently) "post-Cyberpunk"?
Post-Cyberpunk is basically an existentialist conclusion to the nihilism in Cyberpunk. You see that by contrasting the ending of Snow Crash with the ending of the entire Sprawl trilogy, and then contrast the same Sprawl trilogy with the Bridge trilogy, by the same author, years later. CP's message is desolation, loneliness, grim realization, whereas post-Cyberpunk has that glimmer of hope at the end of tunnel, that things might turn alright, after all.
I think Shadowrun sort of transcends the actual thematics of Cyberpunk by adding the fantastical element, I think it's that magic defies reason, and because it does, the inevitable grim conclusion of the reality before magic (and this includes even the most cynical understandings of medicine, physics and chemistry as we know it) is no longer applicable, so people can be whoever they want, whatever they want, provided they are gifted to do so and can believe. It's a little more idealistic than 'pure' cyberpunk, which also means it loses a lot of the noir element.
@surreality said in How should IC discrimination be handled?:
@deadculture I'm hoping we can all agree as a board that nobody should ever, under any circumstances, be that egregiously OOCly gross again.
Like, if we can't even collectively get past that dazzlingly low a bar, it's time to take up the fiddle, 'cause Rome's a-burnin' bright.
Honestly, Firan could turn a relatively decent person into a rabid monster within 3 to 4 months in there.
A lot of us, apparently, including former staffers, came to this realization as soon as the Firan spell was broken. It was a bad toxic environment to be in, and if you wanted to stay, you had to adapt. Of course, you adapted for the worse, not for the best.
But really, if there's a manual of how tos of proper RPing and/or being a decent MUSHing person somewhere, it has to have some Firan examples of how not to.
There were some good things, of course; they kept people on the game. But they weren't enough, and they shouldn't ever justify the level of abuse that went on there.
And while I'm actually alright with the use of offensive language in poses, etc., it should probably be conveyed in a way that won't seem like an outright attack to the person behind the screen. But that takes a level of finesse, or at least, knowing who you're playing with. So you can probably base the contents of your pose on your scene partner if they're a known quantity, and settle for something subtler if you don't know them.
But yeah... @bored's right. At least one person there might have been a predator.
@wanderer I believe in the supernatural. I am not particularly religious (well, not in the go-to-church way) but I am rather spiritual. I've seen and experienced things that make me believe in the things beyond. I mostly try to suppress this side around people who are either hardcore Christians or staunch atheists because, in the end, they are both radically against it. The derision and the mockery comes from the same wellspring. I don't believe in ectoplasm and shit like that, but I do have my beliefs' version of spirits, ghosts, divinity and purpose in life. People's experiences with the beyond vary wildly and so I never try to impose my viewpoint on others, but I do understand what you meant about skepticism or just 'being open to the experience'. Some people don't believe in a higher being, that's fine, it's their belief. I do, though.
Science can't and won't explain everything because not everything has a reason to be or makes sense in the world. Rationality only goes so far. That's why religion still exists in the world where science is king.
I think it's more honest to say that players can change the outcome of IC events, if not the world itself, if that's the design people tend to refer to.
That said, saying you can change the world or that other characters have, etc., when it clearly doesn't seem to be the case anymore will lead to newcomers resenting the promise that was broken at the onset.
Ultimately, I would love to see a game where the entire structure is dynamic and things can be shaped according to how player characters moved the world. Unfortunately, I think this would have to be episodic/generational.
@Ganymede Most L&L games don't exactly encourage medieval/Renaissance realpolitik, either, because, rightly, it is detrimental to keeping a playerbase.
@darinelle said in The limits of IC/OOC responsibility:
@surreality said in The limits of IC/OOC responsibility:
@darinelle This.
This is absolutely a thing that happens, and it is maddening.
"That is clearly not the author's intent!!!"
"I am the author. You're wrong."
"I'm not wrong!" <continues making the same argument, usually with 'you're just changing it then because... ' accusation, the low-hanging fruit of this logic>
This is the reason I buy vodka, in a nutshell.
That I have never broken down and just trolled anyone pulling the 'not the author's intent' card when I am the author with, "What do you think the intent was?" "Really? Interesting!" and instead go with, "How can I make this more clear so this misunderstanding does not recur? Is there something you think would help clarify here?" is one of the hardest tidbits of integrity to hang on to, some days.
Sometimes I just let them misunderstand, because they're not going to hear me and any attempts I've made require more access to information they don't have. From a GM perspective, they can be wrong and misunderstand ICly and that's ok, and OOCly they're not hearing me so... they're just ICly wrong and maybe one day they'll realize it and maybe one day they won't but the setting is the setting is the setting, regardless.
The fact you're trying to help as staff rather than gaslight the shit out of them speaks to your favor, at any rate.
@Tempest Which is something most Lords and Ladies games sorely lack: compelling political vicissitudes to drive a story. It always ends up being a zero-sum game where two political interests are aligned in complete opposition, because even if there's a peaceful transition for someone's rise, someone likely gets dinged for it. Conversely, it is why player vs player action like civil wars and stuff never end well or are just killed in the cradle by staff: because the attrition will cost the game players or derail the theme.
@packrat WoD somehow mires itself in so much mechanical bullshit an easy 30-minute fight turns into a spammy 5 hour fight and the ST is left with a headache at the end.
I've never been so tired as after STing a combat plot in WoD.
And Pendragon is about 3000x worse, for its fatality rate.
I think there's a vast difference in moderating the ideas allowed in speech and moderating the type of speech that is allowed. I would never, ever be for the former. No matter how idiotic the idea, I think everyone benefits from having it aired. I think society is increasingly suffering from it's refusal to do the latter.
Like I said, social admonishment will result in standards of compliance. Personal attacks, spreading of false information, inflammatory languages are all well listed in Schopenhauer's The Art of Controversy as being cheap and easy tactics to 'win' an argument. If you're discussing an idea, it would be best if you weren't trying to win the discussion, in my view.
How this applies to MSB, I don't know, but I do know that people need to free themselves of the illusion that unmoderated speech equals free speech.
I seldom see moderation of speech done in a way that's even-handed. You'll often lean one side or another, heavily so, and that will result in ideas being suppressed because they're undesirable to the majority. I haven't seen people here get banned for espousing controversial ideas or viewpoints to what's relevant to the community itself, as pertains to MUSHing or MUXing or what have you, so that's good.
That said, this is a privately owned server with a specific set of rules that govern the expected conduct of the participants. If that's not moderated speech, even if passively moderated (and enforced, given the repeated bans of a known troll), then what is it?
Additionally, I'm not for blacklisting certain words. As another said, words are words. They in and of themselves are (mainly) neutral. However, I do think it's reasonable to moderate the way in which words are used and when someone asks me to not use a certain word as a negative descriptor, it seems only basic decency to comply.
This is, as someone else pointed out in another thread, I think it was @Salty-Secrets, in fact, unevenly applied. 'Dick', 'dickhead', and a lot of other 'male-referring' words can be used and people won't blink once.
You throw a 'cunt' out there, it's armageddon again. And before someone tries to apply critical theory to my argument: please don't. You can't have it both ways. Either do it in the absolute or don't do it at all.
@auspice I would literally pay someone 2 dollars on patreon or some other funding website if they could fold origami while cursing profusely in a stream of consciousness Al Pacino-style rant about an issue.
@apos Yeah, I see what you mean.
I think the stances in that particular debate are "words are just words" and "slurs are words that, when used, in any context, cause harm."
But I can agree 100% with your point that political leanings don't have much to do with what we're discussing so much as whether moderation for those words needs to be active or simply left as-is (ie. there is a rule about no homophobia/racism/discrimination, etc. in the rules of the forum) and we leave the things that fall beyond the scope (such as the usage of some words people find unpleasant) as "legal gray area", in the way that I see it.
I think, preferably, we might want to not open the political can of worms.
(PS: while holocaust denial is protected speech in the US, you get jail-time in about 90% of the other countries that are signatory to a certain UN Convention on Human Rights. On the other hand, I am a long time admirer of the almost-absolute sanctity of freedom of speech in your country. It defeats the point of the real crazies out there when they're allowed to say their things and can be dismissed out of hand, versus censoring them and then they have that as confirmation bias to point out to others that might be susceptible to the siren's call of political violence.)
@friendlybee Not so bold, when there are prime examples literally everywhere on this forum. Your attempt to frame your argument in a way that makes you sound like you're an authority on the subject notwithstanding, @surreality points out the wholly non-partisan nature of dogpiling.
It really just depends whether you've a tough crowd for your ideas or not.
@Tinuviel I know a sugarcane-based distilled drink that would get you drunk enough for ANY MSB discussions.
@insomnia Thanks for the cookie. And don't worry about it. If I had an issue with anything you said I'd address it personally. Way I see it, you weren't really attacking anyone nor shitting up the thread and so I think that's respectful and deserves respect in turn.
@auspice I am still of the opinion that a fantasy game could be made along the same general lines, with each RL season being a different point of the timeline of the setting, even if it's a limited run.
Player actions affecting the setting and then you get to see how that happens quicker than the usual L&L feeling of provoked stasis.
That said, mad props to @Botulism for showing how a serial game can be done.