Posts made by Demiurge

Livestream of me updating Dreamwalk MUSH: https://www.twitch.tv/thestranjer

@auspice said in Dreamwalk MUSH:

(We can, just won't happen for a few hours prob. Unless @Ganymede or @Arkandel have a chunk of free time before I do. Picking out posts is tedious and I am kind of buried under work for the next 3 hours+)

I sent Arkandel a message but if it's a humongous pain in your ass, don't bother. Since this game is in active development, my intention is to use this thread for the following purposes:

• changelog updates, and
• discussion on how the game ought to be run (I realize I turned a lot of people off by having speech codes which are too lax)

EDIT: So if reaming me out for going against the grain is commonplace here, I'll cop that on the nose.

@faraday said in Dreamwalk MUSH:

@demiurge No, I was just saying that I don’t think that policy conveys your intent and you may want to reword it to be more explicit. Or don’t. It’s your game and I was never going to play on it either way because it’s not my jam. I’m just trying to save you some headaches down the road. If you don’t like the suggestion, ignore it.

That's fair. I'm a little disappointed that the whole point of this thread effectively got captured by a conversation about IC/OOC speech codes. Feels bad, man.

@faraday said in Dreamwalk MUSH:

@demiurge said in Dreamwalk MUSH:

And I fully appreciate your concern. But I'm reluctant to impose ideological restrictions, in particular on IC content. As said before, I'm sorry if that amounts to your disinterest or anybody else's disinterest.

Did you see the part where I wasn’t telling you to change your policy, but merely to add a note making that policy clear in your policy file?

Yes, but that is in the TOS as well:

By going farther, you agree that anything you are exposed to here is
your own responsibility. We are not here to babysit you, so that
aforementioned laissez faire culture might mean you read something that
offends you. It might even offend us. We generally don't regard this
as a very good reason to ban or consequence people.

So I figured, since this has been addressed, that you were stressing this for some other reason. Like wanting me to change the policy.

@faraday said in Dreamwalk MUSH:

I'm not telling you to forbid anything, nor am I judging you for allowing IC bigotry.

@faraday

bigoted attitudes ICly

To reiterate: OOC harassment will not, under any circumstances, be tolerated.

@faraday said in Dreamwalk MUSH:

Because seriously - there are a lot of MUSHers who don't want to deal with that kind of crap in their pretendy-fun-times.
You can yell all you want about how "it's just IC" but that's fooling yourself.
When you're a woman or African American or LGBTQ (or any other marginalized group) in real life and get subjected to hatred and discrimination all day long, the very last thing that a lot of those people want to do is have their avatars (who, quite often, fall into the same demographic as themselves) subjected to the same crap in their interactive fiction. So if you're going to require them to do so or else excuse themselves from the game, then that is the sort of policy that needs to be spelled out up front.
Otherwise I absolutely guarantee you're going to end up with serious drama sooner rather than later.

And I fully appreciate your concern. But I'm reluctant to impose ideological restrictions, in particular on IC content. As said before, I'm sorry if that amounts to your disinterest or anybody else's disinterest.

@thenomain said in Dreamwalk MUSH:

@kanye-qwest said in Dreamwalk MUSH:

@thenomain said in Dreamwalk MUSH:

@demiurge said in Dreamwalk MUSH:

If it's too offensive for Trump to say, then I'm likely going to ban it on obnoxiousness grounds.

Troll will always out itself.

Yeah, that kind of cements it.

I would like to bounce off this a bit: I know we have a few conservatives on this board who feel overwhelmed by the angry socially liberal view of many of the posters here. We know that this is not you. It doesn't take a sociology degree to see where "I disagree" becomes poisonous, and I honestly find hate from either side to be antisocial and part of the problem.

And that's it. The hate. Framing anyone else's "I disagree" into hate is just as much of a problem, and anyone being afraid to say what's on our mind because that framing (mostly) respectful disagreement as hate-speech is our new normal is the problem.

This is an apolitical statement, unless trying to find cohesion within a community is political.

--

@demiurge said in Dreamwalk MUSH:

@thenomain said in Dreamwalk MUSH:

@demiurge said in Dreamwalk MUSH:

If it's too offensive for Trump to say, then I'm likely going to ban it on obnoxiousness grounds.

Troll will always out itself.

Please don't call me a troll. And please don't call me "it."

After your recent posts, I find it difficult to believe that this is a sincere request.

Calling people trolls and "it" is decidedly dehumanizing, and I sincerely do not appreciate it.

@thenomain said in Dreamwalk MUSH:

@demiurge said in Dreamwalk MUSH:

If it's too offensive for Trump to say, then I'm likely going to ban it on obnoxiousness grounds.

Troll will always out itself.

Please don't call me a troll. And please don't call me "it."

@foxstevenson said in Dreamwalk MUSH:

@demiurge said in Dreamwalk MUSH:

@faraday said in Dreamwalk MUSH:

That is really not conveying the same stance you're putting forth in this thread. In virtually every other MU game out there, pushing unwanted romantic fantasies or bigoted attitudes ICly - the types of things you've expressly said you're OK with - would in fact be considered "obnoxious". So players are going to expect you to deal with that unless you clearly state otherwise up front.
A lot of folks don't want to come onto a game and be assailed with hatred and harassment - even ICly. If you want an unfiltered environment, that's your prerogative. But what you've posted vs. what you're saying you'd tolerate is virtually guaranteed to result in dramatic meltdowns.
Create the type of environment you want to see. We're all just trying to help you stave off drama based on A TON of experience with this sort of issue.

That's fair, but expecting a broad ban on "bigoted attitudes" does, as a matter of fact, amount to expecting literally everybody to be a PC progressive not just OOC, but IC. I know this upsets some of the users here, but classifying the attitudes of about half of the U.S. population, or the attitudes of a duly-elected U.S. President, as "obnoxious" enough to be unacceptable in a roleplaying environment is... a bit much. To put it politely.

So, I've arrived at a decision for a litmus test on what qualifies as "too obnoxious": you can't realistically imagine the President (that's Trump) saying it. If it's too offensive for Trump to say, then I'm likely going to ban it on obnoxiousness grounds.

I get the need for some control on content, but too much control can ruin a game even worse than no control at all. So this is a fairly balanced conclusion.

bangs gavel so ordered :^)

Have you, ya know, actually listened to the things that man has said?

Yes. And a lot of them are very upsetting to a lot of people. But I've decided I'm not going to forbid the views of large segments of the U.S. population from having an IC presence in my game. I'm sorry.

@faraday said in Dreamwalk MUSH:

That is really not conveying the same stance you're putting forth in this thread. In virtually every other MU game out there, pushing unwanted romantic fantasies or bigoted attitudes ICly - the types of things you've expressly said you're OK with - would in fact be considered "obnoxious". So players are going to expect you to deal with that unless you clearly state otherwise up front.
A lot of folks don't want to come onto a game and be assailed with hatred and harassment - even ICly. If you want an unfiltered environment, that's your prerogative. But what you've posted vs. what you're saying you'd tolerate is virtually guaranteed to result in dramatic meltdowns.
Create the type of environment you want to see. We're all just trying to help you stave off drama based on A TON of experience with this sort of issue.

That's fair, but expecting a broad ban on "bigoted attitudes" does, as a matter of fact, amount to expecting literally everybody to be a PC progressive not just OOC, but IC. I know this upsets some of the users here, but classifying the attitudes of about half of the U.S. population, or the attitudes of a duly-elected U.S. President, as "obnoxious" enough to be unacceptable in a roleplaying environment is... a bit much. To put it politely.

So, I've arrived at a decision for a litmus test on what qualifies as "too obnoxious": you can't realistically imagine the President (that's Trump) saying it. If it's too offensive for Trump to say, then I'm likely going to ban it on obnoxiousness grounds.

I get the need for some control on content, but too much control can ruin a game even worse than no control at all. So this is a fairly balanced conclusion.

bangs gavel so ordered :^)

@surreality said in Dreamwalk MUSH:

@coin This.

I know some games have coded things that replace the name with something like 'a quiet male voice' or 'an androgynous melodic voice' or whatever else, too. These can and should not duplicate (however you want to figure that out), but keeping people's contributions separate from one another isn't trivial. You could even set something up that when you actually meet the person face to face in the dream world, you 'learn' their voice, and thus see their name instead of the descriptor.

The 'spoof others' thing is definitely interesting as a concept, but I am unsure if it's one I would be comfortable running with personally.

If you're going to allow that, I'd suggest that coming with a cost of points that, when applied, records who used it and the statement made with it for staff records.

Most people in this hobby are awesome. Some are not, and that smaller group would be very likely to use this for many ugly things, plenty of them OOC grudgewank, trying to provoke OOC jealousy, ruining OOC friendships, or trying to drive players they dislike from the game, etc.

I didn't notice this response at first. But if I get OOC "grudgewank" or whatever else to that effect, or someone is harping on a particular user constantly and it dominates the channel, that will get nixed. I'm just not going to ban offhand remarks to the effect of "man I really want to fuck so-in-so" or "so-in-so is a stupid bitch" on the basis of 'harassment'.

Also, 'spoof others' is not literal. You just write like them. If you do so convincingly, well, people are convinced. Otherwise, they aren't. Also you could kind of just emulate characters to convey your perceptions of them, and if a bunch of players do it together, over time they could become a de facto Jungian archetype of their own on the game, taking on its own life of sorts.

@golgoth said in Dreamwalk MUSH:

@coin The Strange: I brought that very thing up in-game. I am debating making a dreamscape to reference the setting.

Please, tell me more about this setting. It sounds interesting.

@coin said in Dreamwalk MUSH:

@demiurge said in Dreamwalk MUSH:

Pro-LGBT space marines are, dare I say it, a retarded idea.

The fact that you put "dare I say it" there kind of entirely turns me off this entire thing, because it implies that you are indeed aware of the offensiveness and chose to "dare" to offend anyway.

Best of luck, though!

That's fair. I am not here to personally attack anybody, and I don't want to give the impression that I will let people turn Dreamwalk MUSH into Stormfront MUSH, but at the same time, I don't want to subordinate everything to progressive ideological whims, either. There are, to me, things more important than that.

@wizz said in Dreamwalk MUSH:

For the love of god man, if you don't want a meltdown, then put up a disclaimer.

I did put up a disclaimer, it's in the TOS:

You Are Responsible For What You Transmit

Please don't transmit anything obnoxious, because if it gets bad enough, banning you might become necessary. While we are in favor of a laissez faire culture, there are limits. Try not to push them too far.

Definitely don't transmit anything that is illegal under United States Law. We won't hesitate to cooperate with authorities if you end up using this service for anything illegal under United States Law.

We Are Responsible For Nothing

By going farther, you agree that anything you are exposed to here is your own responsibility. We are not here to babysit you, so that aforementioned laissez faire culture might mean you read something that offends you. It might even offend us. We generally don't regard this as a very good reason to ban or consequence people.

Be Creative, Have Fun, and Be Fun

In spite of how harsh the first two things might sound, we would much prefer to have creative but pain in the ass players than easily-managed but boring players. Things only seem ridiculous before they've been done before. Do something neat and even forbidden. Play along with other users, but don't be a cog or a pushover. By going further, you agree to create something clever, to make your presence known, to, simply put, pull some shit. In character, of course. Try to keep out of character drama to a minimum.

@roz said in Dreamwalk MUSH:

@demiurge I think you're doing a lot of conflation with "something that offends someone's sensibilities" and "something designed to harass other players and make them uncomfortable." I'd suggest you think of it less in terms of censorship and more in terms of "how is this theme and medium I've chosen going to allow people freedom to be creeps and how can I can minimize that." Everyone on the thread gets what you're trying to go for, I think. It's just that you seem to be a bit unaware of what you're opening the game up to. (Smack me if I'm wrong, but I'd wager you maybe don't have the experience of being a woman on the internet? Obviously harassment is not limited to women, but there's a reason why a lot of folks talking now on the thread about this point are women.)

I don't have the experience of being a woman on the Internet. I'm not a woman, so I can't. However, I've had another user on the game say that if someone uses "fag" or some variation on it, they'll leave immediately. There's a reason why I'm using the word "offensive" here because it covers the totality of the complaints here. I haven't had a content complaint that didn't fall under that umbrella.

You should bear in mind that, as far as Dreamwalk MUSH is concerned, all of this is hypothetical. I haven't had anybody say terribly bad things by 21st century Anglo standards. Not to my recollection. I jus don't want to run a game where the first time a player who comes in as something to the effect of a space marine and calls a homosexual man "degenerate," which is a pretty reasonably in character thing for such a character to do, and have to deal with a massive meltdown from my playerbase. Pro-LGBT space marines are, dare I say it, a retarded idea.

Just as you are concerned that I'll tolerate serious creeps, I'm concerned that the players will expect me to maintain and enforce what amounts to a badwords list, and ban entire subject matters or common perspectives in the interest of sanitizing things to conform to their sensibilities.

@sunny said in Dreamwalk MUSH:

I would recommend that anything sexual in any fashion involving another PC be something that that PC's player has to consent to. This includes fantasies of consensual action and the like. Not that the other character can't have them, but that they can't be explored on screen (in any way, shape, or form) about another player's character without that player agreeing to it OOC. Because of the nature of the game's reality, fantasies of consensual acts could easily be used for the purposes of being a creep.

You know, and I get that, but I'm kind of rubbing the bridge of my nose between my eyes on this one. I can totally see some weirdo coming on here just to creep on you and be a pain in the ass like that. That such is realistic is very believable. So if the majority of someone's IC content is just lewdposting on CU, I'd likely ban them for being a shit player.

THAT SAID, I'm getting the vibe from a lot of people here that they want a blanket ban on offensiveness. That, I'm not really willing to accommodate.

@wizz said in Dreamwalk MUSH:

@demiurge said in Dreamwalk MUSH:

Harassment of player != harassment of character. If a player harasses my other players, they're banned. If someone's character harasses some other character, that's a shadier zone. A much shadier one. The expectation that your character needs administrative protection from uncomfortable speech/actions against them, to me, seems excessive.

I... think you're going to find that not a lot of people agree with the distinction you're trying to make there in regards to offensive or behavior. Personally, I find your argument bizarre. A "character" is not a person, it's an imaginary construct that has a real life person behind it. Content that is by its nature sensitive or offensive could be imposed on a REAL-LIFE PERSON that, according to you, is obligated to exposure because...it's a stream of consciousness? It's not, man, it's not actually someone's literal unfiltered stream of consciousness being automagically channeled into the void, the output from that chat channel on your game is the result of a deliberate choice by another living breathing player who could very well use the excuse of "oh, it's my character's subconscious! Bleh!" to say or behave however they want with no other justification.

It's pretty black and white.

I'm willing to consider censorship in extreme cases, but what I'm getting from you in this post and others in general is that you demand an outright ban on all things you find offensive. That's pretty black and white, and it's something I'm not inclined to accommodate. "That offends my sensibilities" cannot, and will not, become a basis for censorship on this game. And I'm sorry if that alienates you and a lot of other people, but it's not something I'm budging on.

@pyrephox said in Dreamwalk MUSH:

Particularly where sexual harassment is concerned, forcing sexual interactions on a character is often done for the purposes of getting off to the idea of forcing those sexual interactions on the, usually presumed female, player. I guarantee that if you do have someone posting about how they want to commit sexual assault on Character X, they're not doing it because they're a deep and thoughtful roleplayer who wants to explore how their character's subconscious reality includes a highly sexualized id that has been shaped by the violence of their childhood.
There is a reason that games like Shangrila have MORE restrictions and abilities to nope out any content, in some ways, than other games - because they know that people are going to be playing with some damned disturbing content, and thus that players need more control over their interactions with the inevitable creeps who want to force people (usually women) to put up with their creepy bullshit because "it's IC". Not that places like Shang do a great job, mind you, and have plenty of creeps nonetheless, but this sounds like a 4-chan disaster in the making.
Which is a shame, because the idea of the game itself is really cool, and I had been thinking about making a character there. I hope it works out.

This is fairly persuasive. I think I'll ban rape/sexual assault shit in-game. If you see anything to that effect, report it to me, and I'll remove that player.

@pyrephox said in Dreamwalk MUSH:

So, your proposed solution to if someone is using your system to harass another player is for the harassed player to simply remove themselves from a part of the game? The part, it sounds like that is the closest to a general social hub the game has, which will likely also have knock-on effects to their access to other parts of the game, and which by its anonymous nature means that they'll have no idea which of the character who want to join their dreamscape are being played by their harasser?
That may be a policy you want to rethink.

Harassment of player != harassment of character. If a player harasses my other players, they're banned. If someone's character harasses some other character, that's a shadier zone. A much shadier one. The expectation that your character needs administrative protection from uncomfortable speech/actions against them, to me, seems excessive. Like I said, I can be persuaded otherwise, but as it stands I have not been persuaded of this.

@pyrephox said in Dreamwalk MUSH:

Um...it's not "disturbing content" that I think is going to be the problem, but possibly people using the anonymous nature of it to actively harass others. Like, if someone starts posting to the collective unconscious a lot of sexually explicit fantasies about what they want to do to Character X, knowing that the player of Character X can't identify who's talking about the gross stuff, or encouraging more people to start talking about sexually explicit fantasies about that character. And for 'sexually explicit', you can also sub in violent fantasies, or whatever - having a free for all to be able to talk about how you fantasize about skinning Character Y alive, or whatever, knowing that the player of Character Y can't do anything about it...that's a bit offputting.
I would hope that would never actually happen, but I think you have to have a policy in place for when it does. Likewise, for being able to bar someone from a dreamscape if they are just...utterly gross towards the character who 'owns' the dreamscape to the point that it makes the game unfun for the player.

Well, I definitely understand the point of imposing content limits. However, are inappropriate sexual fantasies the proper limit for a stream of consciousness Jungian cacophony? People are into some bizarre shit, man. I legitimately and actually think that if you impose content limits like "inappropriate sexual fantasies," where your concept of "inappropriate" includes "things you probably shouldn't say out loud in real life," then I think we're kind of at an impasse. Part of the point of the anonymity is to reveal an uncensored view of what the characters actually think, where your recourse is limited primarily to guessing at who said what, or turning off the channel completely and in doing so isolating yourself.

A collective unconscious, minus potentially upsetting content, isn't really an unconscious. To me, it cheapens it, quite a bit. I don't want to go to your game, and break your rules, but I'm not inclined to impose these rules right now myself.

@sunny said in Dreamwalk MUSH:

ETA: I am a "snowflake" and I am "triggered" by content involving both sexual assault and suicide. If this is something I have no recourse for avoiding on this game, I would want to know about it, so I don't get involved in the first place. I am using myself as an example because it's an easy one, and I know I'm not the only one, not because it's something I'm suggesting be addressed for me personally.

And that's totally understandable. I'm not here to shout "triggered snowflake libshit CUCK" at you. I definitely sympathize with simply not wanting to see certain things. For me, content of actual animal or actual child abuse (fuck you Daddyofive) just plain pisses me off. So I get that. But I'm not sure how much censorship of works of fiction I want to do.

You should bear in mind that I can be reasoned with, and I might be persuaded to impose some real content limits, like if a bunch of pedophiles raid my game and dominate the game with their pederastic fursonas, I will totally quash that. But as it stands, I just don't see a point for content limits if there's an antagonistic male user who catcalls you in his internal monologue which you have access to.

As for your personal recourse, you can CHANNEL/MUTE COL to make it go away. Is that helpful?

@arkandel said in Dreamwalk MUSH:

@demiurge said in Dreamwalk MUSH:

@arkandel said in Dreamwalk MUSH:

@demiurge That's interesting, but once you get many players won't it get confusing to not know who is responding to whom or follow the conversation at all, especially if there's more than one going on?

Not to say that confusing is a bad thing necessarily.

Yes. It's supposed to be confusing. It's supposed to be a cacophony. You're not really supposed to have a coherent exchange. It's supposed to be stream of consciousness, emotive, etc, but definitely not coherent.

I'd just advise keeping full (non-anonymous) records somewhere even if staff aren't around at the time in case you have to deal with creeps.

You still need to know who called people names, and set limits in your policies about what the cacophony can, and cannot, be about.

I do keep logs of who posted what, but it's mostly for the purposes of helping law enforcement should someone think they can post something illegal under United States law, like a credible death threat against a real person or links to pornography that nobody should be allowed to see. As cool as anonymity is conceptually, I don't want my game to be a vector for any of that kind of shit.

That said, I'm actually really conflicted about this. Should I go for authenticity, which can be extremely fucked up in more ways to list here, or should I try to maintain a certain amount of decorum? Authentically speaking, people's internal monologues are filled with slur-laden rants, with socially unacceptable sexual thoughts, with word salad non-sequitur conspiracy theories, and other mental detritus. Most people have a few of these kinds of things going on in their heads. Why would a dreamverse with people from all different universes be any different? Why wouldn't a 40k Space Marine have a few uncouth or insane thoughts from the perspective of his own culture, for example?

But on the other hand, being exposed to it is decidedly uncomfortable for most people. It really is, and I get that. So I'm conflicted, because I am wholly unperturbed by this kind of thing, and I think exposure to it adds to the authenticity of the channel, yet at the same time I know for a fact that a lot of people will be totally unsettled the first time someone blames dajooz for something on it, or whatever else.

Ideally, I'd prefer reconciliation of authenticity and taste, but I'm not sure how. I don't want to turn people off, but I don't want to turn my game into a hugbox, either.

You know?

@faraday said in Dreamwalk MUSH:

That's very different from what most people think of when they say "RP".
Which is fine! It's just good to set expectations in the wiki about what the game is about and what limitations there are so everyone's on the same page coming in.

Yeah, I'm definitely getting that. When people say "RP," they seem to refer specifically to scenes. This is entirely fair. However, there are a lot of ways one can project their character into things without having a scene, and I think stressing them is appropriate in the context of this MUSH.