Best posts made by Derp

@ZombieGenesis said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:

I'm tempted to make a Champions or Heroes Unlimited MUSH just to spite people.

Riiiiifts.

@sunny said in GMs and Players:

@derp

If I were a player on your game, and my ex husband that beat me showed up on your game, and I brought it to you and asked you for help, what would you do? It happened outside of the game and has no bearing whatsoever on your site or RP there.

Tell you the same thing I'd tell everyone else: Tell him not to contact you, and if he continues to contact you, I'll boot his ass. Same as I would anyone else.

I feel that's a reasonable response.

I have no evidence of what transpired outside the game, and I'm not comfortable trying to sort out what happened in a location that I do not control. I'm not comfortable taking action without evidence, because it is too easy for people to manufacture stories about one another. I accept that when I create an online space I have the responsibility to make sure the interactions in that space are safe, but I'm not comfortable taking it beyond that.

I would urge you to contact the police, especially if he's violating a restraining order, and to go to a judge to get one if you don't have one. Presumably, these two actions would get him off the game soon enough. And since guys like that basically do not take no for an answer, we'd certainly have evidence for a ban quickly enough. But to do anything else? Is beyond the scope of running an RPG.

Change your question up a bit.

I'm the manager of a McDonalds, and there are two customers in line. One of them turns and then points and yells "that is my ex husband who used to beat me, please help!" The other dude, meanwhile, looks reasonably chill, and hasn't interacted with the first customer in any way that I can see.

For all I know, customer #1 is having a bad mental health day. But even beyond that -- I'm the manager of a McDonalds. I'm not a marriage counselor, or a therapist, or anything else. I provide a specific service, and control the space wherein that service is provided, under specific terms, to call comers.

It is way outside of my job description to try to police the outside social interaction of two adults like that. I make the rules for the space we are in, and enforce them. There are other powers and institutions better suited to making other calls like that.

If he breaks one of my rules? Sure, I'll boot his ass out the door. Until then? That's outside the scope of my expertise, and I'm not going to get involved in it other than to point you to resources that might be better suited for your needs.

@RightMeow said in Dating in the 2020's:

@Ominous

Okay, I know most the ones listed so far, but what the heck is Hinge?

It's what happens when a younger generation realizes that facebook is a thing and they don't have to fill out 200 questions on OkCupid or Match or something and just have the app crawl through their other social media connections to try and find people in their network and their friends' networks that have the same sorts of interests and stuff.

You know. Using Facebook to facilitate having a sex life. Bringing it back to its roots.

@krmbm said in GMs and Players:

You are running a MUSH with 12 people on it.
You need to treat it that way.

I'm running a website where grown-ass adults play a game after agreeing to abide by a certain set of rules.

Exactly how do you think I should be treating it?

I'm not their therapist, parent, or legal guardian. I'm not their attorney or their spouse.

I'm the gamerunner. The website admin. And the DM of the game.

Anything else you all want to take on above and beyond that is just that -- above and beyond. But let's be real about the baseline if we're going to talk about setting reasonable boundaries, because that, to me, is not being reasonable.

@bear_necessities said in GMs and Players:

I actually think you're purposefully missing all the points here which makes this not a very constructive thread.

I mean, I could say the same for you. You would go above and beyond the job description. Cool.

I'm going to stick to the job description and give you the tools to help yourself. You the battered spouse or whatever are perfectly capable of standing in the public restaurant and calling the police and waiting until they arrive to deal with the problem. You don't need anyone else to do that for you, and it's not reasonable to put the burden of your interpersonal issues on a complete stranger and expect that they're going to take up arms in your favor.

@HelloProject said in Dating in the 2020's:

I have 3 packs of McDonald's Szechuan sauce.

jealousy intensifies

@krmbm said in GMs and Players:

dude wtf leave my friend alone.

I think that this, right here, is the crux of the thing, though.

In a thread about setting reasonable boundaries, I agree with @Tinuviel

@tinuviel said in GMs and Players:

When you have to enforce rules, you're not their friend. You need to keep that boundary.

They are not my friends by default. They are strangers, and we're sharing a common space under a defined set of protocols.

Personally, I hate the "living room" theory of GMing. I don't know how it became somehow the standard we reach for.

To me, it's more like: the conference room that my company rented to host this little cocktail party for this interest group.

I set up the room, I decorated, I made some executive decisions and sent out an invitation for the people that are interested in the 2022 Electric Stove Top Coil Reform Committee, or whatever. And I opened the doors.

I might know some of these people through personal or professional circles. I probably don't. But I mingle and make small talk, and if I hear two people talking about the same thing, I might try to introduce them, group them together, generally keep everyone engaged with the topic of Stove Coil Reform (it's really the tragedy of our times).

But even my friends are here for a formal function. Our relationship in that role is different than the celebratory kegger I'll be throwing if this thing goes off right.

And if some stranger comes up to everyone and starts going on about their Tragic Backstory (tm) and about how Bob Ruined All of their Everything -- that's going to be uncomfortable. And frankly a little gauche. That setting is neither the time nor place to go into your Deep Personal History about Bob and that time he probably gave you chlamydia or whatever because he's a cheating bastard that ruined your life, and I need to throw him out of the party because you can't be in the same room with him.

This is how I view MU's, as well. It's a defined setting that's only casual to a point, in that you're all drinking and having a good time and talking about this Thing that you're all passionate about -- stovetop coils.

Anything more personal that that is, I think, probably a bit removed from what we should expect as a baseline.

Button down

Button down with a different collar style

Button down, but checkered

Button down, but checkered and with a different collar style

Jacket, two buttons

Jacket, three buttons

Jacket but with pinstripes and two buttons

Jacket but with pinstripes and three buttons

Grey suit, one lapel style

Same grey suit, different lapel style

Navy suit

Black suit

Black suit but with pinstripes

Ties were, like, the only remotely interesting thing to buy. (Also sometimes cufflinks and pocket squares if you were feeling extra sharp)

ETA: @Auspice men's clothing looks awful if it's not tailored and you don't have the physique of a marble statue with a ton of ass in the back.

FIFY, for clarity.

@icanbeyourmuse said in GMs and Players:

Assume on your game for a moment she was a player who said it that exact way. It might be better to ask what actions she expects to be taken and if there was a reason she suspected/knows it is her ex.

I mean, I'm not even going to go into that level of detail, honestly. As stated, if someone says 'hey this is my creepy ex, help', I am going to tell them exactly what I told them: Tell them not to contact you, and if they continue to contact you, report it and we'll handle it. I don't need proof that it's their ex. I don't need to know what their personal history is. We have a policy that says 'players can request that you not contact them at any time for any reason', and if they do that, and someone breaks the policy, then that's all I need.

I'm not going to take actions before that happens based on someone's word because as @Devrex said, we have decided to go with an evidence-based system for things that happen in-game and in-game only. But you've got all the tools in the world to control your personal experience and social circles and we'll back your play.

So yeah, I treated the question as serious and gave it a serious answer, even though I felt it was bait. That's really, seriously what I would do.

ETA: We do get a little more nebulous on what counts as in-game if both players are using characters linked to known Ares handles and one of those players has made it clear to the other that they aren't to contact them. That's pretty easy to verify with another gamerunner because there's no question about who's who. It's one of the reasons that we strongly encourage the use of handles.

Best thread.

@krmbm

Meaning "I need a more concrete example of the behavior in question. What is said? About what? Give me an example."

I don't know what "passive aggressive comments on channel that may or may not be about you" means.

@HelloProject said in Dating in the 2020's:

I'm convinced that Tinder hides people from you because I never found the blurred out girl clearly wearing a pickle suit.

Tinder only updates available matches periodically, examines them by distance, and then does a sort of random sort. You also have a limit to the number of people that it will show you in a single day. So it's not necessarily hiding people from you, it's that they are moving in and out of places that Tinder is looking for them, and it's only throwing a certain chunk of them in your direction at any one time. I'm sure there's a bit more backstage algorithm to it, but that's basically what you need to know about Tinder in a nutshell. You're getting a random sample of the total population of <people in whatever geographic area you have it set to look in> per <chunk of time>, which can vary wildly as people move around the city at certain times of day, or on weekends, travel through on major highways, etc.

@bear_necessities said in GMs and Players:

So I'm definitely not saying take everyone at face value or accept 'random' accusations against people and unilaterally ban without any evidence whatsoever. I'm talking for extreme cases like stalking or people who have been knowingly abusive in the community. Like if someone came to me and said Ruiz was on my game, I wouldn't even blink twice even if I couldn't prove it.

The problem is that these two statements are contradictory, because the thing that you said not to do in the first is exactly the thing you're doing in the second. And because of that:

@bear_necessities said in GMs and Players:

The risk to my game by banning someone like that is minimal;

I don't think that this is an accurate statement. I mean, for you, it probably is, but for me, the calculus just falls the other way. Because, I dunno, I'm a crazy misogynist abuse enabler or whatever.

Honestly, I think it's also about what kinds of players do you want to attract. Do you want the ones that care about rules, and process, and transparency, even if it takes time? Or do you want the ones that prefer immediate gut-check judgment calls based on personal beliefs and social opinions? Those are two different kinds of player, and while neither of them is neccessarily inherently wrong -- they both have some positives and negatives -- they're not really compatible viewpoints.

I'm attempting to attract the former. It sounds like you're trying to attract the latter. I'm not sure there's a middle ground there.

Also, weird. My post got cut off and then doubled, so the deleted one down below isn't like, a flounce-off delete of something. Just removing a dupe.

@L-B-Heuschkel said in Getting into Writing:

you learn ALL THE THINGS about pacing, keeping people interesting, setting scenes and moods, and moving a plot.

Do you though? Do you?

I mean, given that there are no small number of criticisms about our distinct lack of ability to do this, I sometimes wonder. You'd think that it would be a way to learn, but many of us seem to be lacking in some essential element.

@bear_necessities said in GMs and Players:

I think when you break it down like that, you are grossly misrepresenting me and what we are all trying to say here and it's very condescending

I'm not trying to be condescending. I'm telling you how this reads to me. Because that's how this reads to me. You, in the same breath, say that you shouldn't just take people at face value and ban people right before you say that you'd take someone at face value and ban a person because that's the lesser of your perceived two evils.

It's a contradiction. And the problem with contradictions, from a logic standpoint, is that you can use them to justify literally anything in an argument whether it logically tracks or not, and it all seems nice and solid, even when it's flawed.

I don't hold this same belief. This is something that you value, and something that I don't. I don't know how else to explain it. If your priority is the process, then it's a problem. If your priority is just teh general gut-check feeling then it's not.

Pop Smoke

@krmbm

Because this random stranger on the internet isn't one of your friends, and so don't deserve the benefit of the doubt, or equal treatment.

Good. Cool.

@SinCerely said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:

Trying to price the things I make. Knowing there's got to be a balance between the sheer joy of someone wearing my work and charging enough money for each piece, and having it completely escape me and hating that I'm some how devaluing my art and making my craft completely unsustainable at this rate. Hate everything today. I love myself more than this but not making it work today.

I've always found that it's best to set a sort of general, nebulous pricing. Like, calculate the cost of the materials, and sell it at 110-125% of materials cost. That usually keeps the prices fairly reasonable.

ETA: Depending on how low the cost of the materials is, you might be able to do more. Like, 2-3x the cost of the materials involved. The more expensive the materials involved, the less you can mark them up really,

@bear_necessities said in GMs and Players:

When did I EVER say that we should ban innocent people?

You did, my dude. Right here:

@bear_necessities said in GMs and Players:

Like if someone came to me and said Ruiz was on my game, I wouldn't even blink twice even if I couldn't prove it.

You would ban a person on purely an accusation with no proof whatsoever, whether they were the person or not, regardless of what harm it would do to them or their reputation in the process. You literally do not care whether they are the guilty party, you just boot them anyway.

How is it not clicking for you that the things you're saying run in opposite directions? I mean, really. Do you really think this, and the concept of "of course we would never ban an innocent person" are actually compatible?

@Rinel said in The Work Thread:

I have to work on Mardi Gras.

This should be illegal

Same, girl. Same. Solidarity.

@krmbm said in GMs and Players:

Hey, you know there's a difference between "couldn't prove it" and "no proof," right?

That's not how proof works. You either have proof of something or you don't.

Are you thinking perhaps of evidence?