Controversial posts made by Derp

@Tyche said:

I don't find the argument that if you don't accept the position of the poster then you are part of the problem.
Just maybe the typical response is rationally skeptical.

@Lithium said:

Even as he tries to deflect, he still belittles the issue at hand by the ever present call for evidence.

You know, I had to go through and re-read this a couple of times before I could come up with the reply that I wanted, just because I couldn't believe that the tone of this conversation had actually gone this way. But that said...

When did asking for evidence become a crime? When did a person become a part of the problem when they say "I have not seen the things that you have seen, even given much experience in the same circles. Please show me something more than just your word that this happened?"

That does not make a person a part of the problem, anymore than a judge asking for evidence is a part of the problem when you get two people in a court of law saying opposite things about each other. The judge has no experience in your affair. He has not seen what you have seen. As a reasonable third party, he requires something more than your word in order to take action -- and the people who are decrying it are calling for action to be taken. This isn't someone saying "this is unfortunate", this is someone saying "this should be stopped", and as such, some presentation of evidence should be expected.

The fact that Tyche's post has six downvotes baffles me. Tyche has a valid point, from his frame of reference -- the only evidence presented of this is people who've said they've been subjected to this (and god knows that nobody on the internet has ever been known to lie, or blow something out of proportion). Given the nature of some of the claims, I don't think that asking for evidence beyond "It happened to me and I'm not lying so you have to believe me" is unreasonable.

"You don't believe me and won't believe me unless I present you with evidence, so you are a part of the problem," is just as ludicrous of a statement as "I have never seen any such thing, so there is no problem." Evidence is your middle ground, evidence is how you are going to change the dominant mindset, evidence is the way you're going to get people to respond to your call for action. Not your word, even if you have a lot of people giving their word, especially not in a niche culture that doesn't get a ton of spotlight anyway -- and certainly not if most of the claims come from the internet.

@Ganymede said:

@Roz said:

(well, to be fair, sometimes it is)

I'll amend. It's not always because of "favoritism" or "nepotism."

I think the original point I was trying to make, all the way back in the other thread, is that there is always going to be the appearance of (insert noun of choice-ism) even when you've done your best to try and ensure quality. Nepotism and favoritism have this negative implication that unqualified people get those positions, and really, that's not always the case at all. In my case, it almost never is.

I trust the people I trust because I have long exposure to them. I've seen them in action. And yes, I think that qualifies me to make judgment calls about them in those scenarios. But even more importantly, those people are the ones who are always going to be on my radar anyway, even -after- such a decision is made. Because they've earned that amount of my attention prior, and now that my own reputation is riding on their good behavior, I have extra incentive to try and ensure that they continue to meet those standards.

I meant it as a hypothetical scenario. I don't actually make any such calls in my current position. But I at least think that this discussion is an interesting one, and one that should absolutely be had. There are too many 'vibes' in this hobby, and too many things that people see as set in stone based on whatever sort of negative vibe people have about it -- and really, appearances can be deceiving. For every well-reasoned decision, someone is going to see tyranny and favoritism. For every strategic move, someone is going to see incompetence and disconnection.

Sometimes they're well founded, and philosophically they might be sound, but even in some of those cases they're simply not practical. And practicality is important, too. Sometimes, you just have to make a call.

@Roz said:

@Derp Witness testimony is, in fact, evidence in a trial. And multiple witnesses all corroborating the same story is pretty strong evidence.

Are you saying that if a woman you were personally close to came to you and said, "I've gotten groped and harassed at multiple geek gatherings," your response would be, "Okay, prove it?" This isn't a freaking legal trial. If people were being charged with crimes, then yeah, let the court and its requirements for proving beyond a reasonable doubt rule. Do guys just think there's a massive conspiracy women are running to -- what, even? Take away the boobs in their video games? Just have guys notice when someone in their vicinity is being harassed and support her in shutting it down? Just being more aware to the experience of people outside themselves?

No, I don't have evidence of every instance of my daily life. I haven't happened to be recording my whole day to catch the times I've been sexually harassed.

If something shitty happened to you on a regular basis, and happened to the majority of your friends, and you all spoke up to say, "This shitty thing keeps happening," wouldn't you feel fucking shitty to get laughed at and said, "Okay, I know a huge group of you is saying this, but prove it?"

Yeah, it is fucking shitty.

Except as others have mentioned, this doesn't happen to some of us. @Arkandel, for instance, expressed his bafflement at some of these things. No, this has not happened to me. This has not happened to any of my friends. I know multiple girls in gaming circles, and they're all treated respectfully --- well, except for chats and things in FPS games, but that's different ... everyone gets treated like shit in those. That's equal opportunity shitheadedness.

No. My experience of this thing differs greatly from the experiences being expressed. It differs greatly from the experiences of my friends, male and female, who do this. It is so alienated from my conception of gaming groups in general that my first reaction is 'what?' And then, I follow up on that 'what'. I ask my friends. And if their reaction is also 'what', then yes, I express some skepticism.

I'm not saying that I don't think it happens. I'm sure it does, somewhere. I think it should stop. I'm saying that people should stop tearing down the people asking for evidence of these things, because a) you're not helping your cause in doing so -- you're alienating the very people you're asking to take action in the first place and worse, you're setting them up to disbelieve you in the future by creating a negative rapport. And b), their viewpoints are valid too. This doesn't happen everywhere, to everyone, on the massive scale that the internet would have you believe it does. It is not so wholly pervasive that you would have to be a blind drooling monkey to miss it. And if you're going to convince the people that have no experience of this, in any form, either among themselves or their friends, then when those people say 'I'm going to need something more', you should say 'I can respect that', and then work to find it, instead of getting angry that they would dare ask for such a thing in the first place, those insensitive blind bastards.

ETA: And @Roz, as much as you say this isn't a court of law, American culture is an adversarial culture, and has been since the country was founded. Some of the earliest writers on American culture commented on the legalistic mindset of american relations, and how very formal we as a culture are when it comes to things like evidence of wrongdoing.

And remember, the Civil Rights movement was settled in courts too, with notable cases like Brown II, so when people start talking about Social Justice, it's not unreasonable to think in terms of legalities and evidence.

@Ganymede said:

In short: I'm pretty sure I'm a good team player. But I'm the team player that will stand firm on issues that relate to my players or that will lead, in my experience, to bad outcomes. When that happens, I have to ask if I want to continue to volunteer on the team, or move on so as to avoid a messy game divorce.

See, I'm kind of with @Thenomain on this one in that what you think you're saying isn't necessarily coming off how you think you're saying it. To me, this reads:

"You might have a vision of the game, but I have a vision of the sphere, and if what I want to do isn't something that you want to allow in your game, then I'm going to be standoffish and obstinate about it until you either concede or I rage quit, no matter your justification for it because my opinion is ultimately the most important one and to hell with you if you can't see my logic."

I've known you to be a fairly reasonable, logical person, but this seems somewhat more antagonistic than what I've seen out of you previously, and definitely isn't something that I would rate very highly in a staff member I was looking to higher to help me manage my vision of a particular game. Perhaps give an example of what you mean, here, so that it comes off a bit less 'fuck you' and we can see what you have in mind?

@Misadventure said:

Okay plain english. I think @coin came across as rude, abrupt, and failed to even try move the conversation forward, and when asked to offer reasoning said "no, you."

It would be like someone responding to a suggestion to a group with "You're a fucker." You'd want some sort of expansion on that, if you assumed the person actually has a point. I assume everyone here has a point, trite or serious, cooperative or conflicting.

I don't assume this means @coin intends that, or is a raging ahole. The offense I feel is that uselessness of a post, followed by defense of said post. Maybe i attend too many productive meetings these days.

Other than that, I was off on my own topic, something acknowledged long ago.

Since nobody here actually seems to understand what the hell you were talking about in the first place, and your plain english explanation still offers no relevant details on that beyond "@Coin is a great big dummy who didn't answer my question that was somehow both relevant to the current topic and off on its own little rail", perhaps you should try starting from the beginning, and explain what precisely it is you're wanting to say and how you want to say it. You said something about xp throttling on gifts, and were told that's both not what we were talking about and not how the system works. What more do you need on that? If you meant something else, perhaps an explanation is in order.

@surreality said:

It's also worth noting -- this is just going back a bit in the conversation -- that autonomy is just one tool in the required toolbox.

There are others that, without them pre-existing, make a job impossible.

Sometimes, especially in this medium, part of the job is to create the tools to accomplish it well at the same time. It's something that, while we tend to grouse about it while we're doing it since it can be a real pain in the ass sometimes•, is a less visible process. (Basically, we're used to it.)

Problem-solving around missing tools is something we do a lot of, broadly speaking.

Autonomy is one of the ones that doesn't have a workaround like this, which is partly why it's essential to have clear boundaries and limits about it.

A lot of us like to take a no-nonsense, common sense approach in talks like this -- I mean I know I prefer it -- but a lot of us have different ideas about what, exactly, constitutes common sense on this front. It might be worth having a community discussion about what various people think this entails at some point, since I suspect it would be fairly illuminating. (Shouldn't happen in this thread, though a thread splinter off a thread splinter is amusing in principle.)

•It also can be awesome brainstorming sessions that are fun, but those are often more rare than the other end of the spectrum is, alas.

I think that @Surreality had a good point when they said that this would be a worthwhile discussion, but should be had in another thread, so I'm creating another thread for it.

@Ganymede said:

Moon Gifts make a world of difference, but I'll concede that the other Gifts can be purchased at a higher cost. So, you can make a combat-ready Elodoth, but the system stacks it so it's easier to be the negotiator/judge.

A world of difference? Eh. They give you an edge, but not so much of one that they make it impossible for other people to one-up you. I have a pretty combat capable character (really, about as capable as it comes) who is neither Blood Talon nor Rahu. In fact, he's not one of the 'classical combat' splat types at all. I guess It really just depends on how you want to progress.

Edited for cleaner wording.

@mietze said:

Yeah, I do think that a game staff that purposefully always will choose personal friends over new-to-them talent that meets the same qualifications for the position probably should be explicit about that.

But then we circle back around to "How do you know who meets the qualifications?" Through experience, of course. If it were as simple as ask-and-answer, then there would be no need to restrict the concepts in the first place. If you would trust anyone off the street to run them, they'd be open to everyone, which would negate needing qualifications in the first place.

And I, personally, would much rather prevent a problem from occurring in the first place than to have to go back and try to mitigate damage once it's already done. While being willing to crack down on violations of policy is certainly important, I would rather avoid situations where the policy is violated to begin with. No matter how much we'd all like to hit the rewind button and fix a thing that's gone off the rails, there is always some residual left over from that, even if it's just a negative experience for the players involved. Simply having a policy in place is not enough to circumvent that. The only cure is prevention, and the most effective way to prevent it is caution.

But I keep seeing a recurring theme here as well, which is this idea that somehow, allowing friends to do something over strangers to you is just the most bonkers idea ever, which I'm going to have to question the reasoning behind. Simply being familiar with someone doesn't automatically mean they're receiving some sort of unfair advantage. Whenever you talk about qualifications, you're talking about prior experience, and when discussing prior experience with any particular player it means that you're talking about familiarity. And familiarity comes the same way for everyone -- by sticking around, communicating, and showing people what you're made of. Nobody is prevented from reaching that, and everyone works toward it in the same way. So exactly how does trusting someone that you're familiar with over someone that you have absolutely no experience with whatsoever, and thus take on greater risk, mean that you're doing something unethical? If anything, you're trying to be at least responsible. Trusting strangers with the keys to your house? Not responsible. Trusting a stranger with your car? Also not responsible. And while you say that it's neither common sense nor good policy, I fail to see how being responsible is either of those things.

@Sunny said:

Fairness should not be the mark you're shooting for. 'Fun' should be the mark shot for. The people who insist on it being 'fair' are naive AND responsible for all sorts of total bullshit on games. Not everybody is capable of playing a (insert any difficult concept here) and why the fuck should we be forced to let them try?

I like how I try and make mine PC and get downvoted, but you are here to come along and say the things I wanted to say in the first place. Perhaps I should rethink this 'trying to be polite' thing. Your way seems like so much more fun.

@ThatOneDude said:

Do people still RP on Eldritch? Let me qualify that with - New player shows up and has opportunities to play with people? Old people return and they can to?

Addendum: Would I have to always play with Derp and would he always play like Chance from TR?4

People still play plenty on Eldritch. Nobody wants to play with you, though, because you have this allergy to subtlety and can't seem to avoid being an asshole to everyone you come into contact with. Kind of like every iteration of the Cade characters you make. So I expect that your experience will be largely poor wherever you go, and you're one to talk about always playing the same sorts.

But lo, I see that you're still approved and taking up a demon spot while contributing nothing. So bitch on, little rager. Bitch on.

If we're talking about WoD games, let me remind you:

Cabal
Coterie
Pack
Motley
Krewe
...

That is built into the system, and rewarded.

Werewolf will be re-opening to apps sometime tomorrow, currently taking 5. If you're looking to play a werewolf, be sure to have an app ready, as they're first come, first served.

So, after several pages, I think so far we've agreed on -- some people like xp caps, some people like timed spends, and between both of those, never the twain shall meet.

So, there are two alternatives there. I think Ark may have mentioned doing away with auto-xp and making people work for beats and whatever, but then you get into situations were those folks who can live on the game end up with all the shinies forever -- not necessarily a great thing.

Someone mentioned skill points or growth points instead of xp.

Do we have other options? Are there mergers of those things in there somewhere that could be considered?

@Ganymede said in RL Anger:

Don't believe the hype. There are plenty of law jobs. The problem is that law school does not teach you how to start up a career in law. Gone are the days of getting picked up by a large firm on grades alone.

Oh, I know there are plenty of law jobs. I meant there is nothing you can do with a bachelor's in Poli Sci. That's apparently where my giant waste of time is. Nevermind I'm getting a J.D., the fact that the poli sci bachelor's can't be used for much in actual political science just means it's not worth it. Apparently. Or so I'm told.

In my practice, I've found that political science majors among the most annoying practicing lawyers; they are so caught up with "rights" and "entitlement" that they forget about "practicality."

Well, that's because we -are- pretty annoying about those things, because people often overlook them in the name of 'practicality', which should not be the case. It's not that we forgot about practicality, we just don't agree with the premise that the easier way is the right way, especially when it comes to rights.

Also, Nano. Also, finals. Also...

@Arkandel

Well, paradox is based out of Stockholm, so the Swedish accent on the voice actors is understandable. Beyond that, though, I thought the commercial thing was pretty cool.

@silentsophia

That's pretty much every state. If you don't have kids, then too bad, your tax dollars aren't for you, they're for the 'unfortunate' woman who hasn't worked a day in the last fifteen years and has nine kids with four different dudes, and another one on the way because her benefits were about to run about so time to start the cycle all over again...

Yes, people legitimately need some of these things, and the programs are good, but there is so much abuse of this system that doesn't get -counted- as abuse of the system (because they follow all the rules, in theory) and that hurts everyone.

It's why I hate it when people say 'welfare abuse is practically non-existant'. Yes, it is existant, it's just gaming the spirit of the rules, rather than the letter of the rules. That kind of shit should not be rewarded. If you can't support child #10 and have been on welfare for fifteen years, then the appropriate state action is not to keep paying you, but to step in and consider placement for the children to increase quality of life.

I don't care how much people scream about 'what about the children' or separating families. Those children are learning extremely poor social mores, and will carry those things on. Fuck that. I would rather see ten responsible citizens who got taken from their mother than ten irresponsible citizens who learned to be that from their mother.

</rant>

@JustNobody said:

Hello! I see, that the posts here are quite old. Any updates on this game? I am interested in vampire sphere mostly: politics, intrigues and etc. Is that possible to get such a thing there? These days I usually run into games, where staff is very strict, but not cooperative and always very busy. I imagine, if you have a strict game, then be there to guide your players or at least answer to their jobs. Otherwise, be pretty free game, that players could improvise and have fun.

So, should I join this game? Will I find what am I looking for?

Thank you for answers!

Currently the game is in its slow season. Most of the staff are also students, and it's finals season. Combine that with Nano and the holidays, and there's not a whole lot going on, either player-wise or staff-wise, though staff is at least responsive and willing to answer jobs that don't involve too much direct oversight.

That said, it's also a game where a large part of the fun you have is the fun that you make. You're given a pretty wide berth on what you can do in your own little slice of the game, with systems in place for handling those kinds of things (Neighborhoods, for example), so if you're looking for something with a ton of staff-driven activity, it might not be the game for you. There are staff plots, of course, an staff is more than willing to help coordinate things, but again, it's our slow season.

That said, I believe that all of the super spheres are mostly full up at the moment, but they open fairly regularly to allow players to app in in batches. Still, if you're looking to start off as a mortal or a ghoul, those are always being accepted.

@Apos said:

Don't you do in depth applications where you have people explicitly write why they'd want such a concept, what they'd do with it, what kind of roleplay they'd create, how it would improve the game, etc?

Sure, that's one way that you could do it, depending on what's being apped for. There are certainly some things that I would trust an application like that for. But for all things? Probably not. Even those applications are just a way of gaining familiarity, and for the things I think are really important I would probably still prefer to see how things play out over time with a specific person than trust a one-off application. It's relatively easy to tailor charming answers to questions that would impress someone in the moment, and then go right back and get your crazy on. But keeping up a consistent pattern of admirable behavior over time takes a lot more dedication which few people are willing to fake for relatively little payoff.

Every method has its advantages and its flaws. Some are better suited to certain circumstances and play styles than others. I'm not saying that my way is the end-all, be-all method by which everything should be done. I just think that it's silly that people get upset about a practice that's intended to make a game better by requiring those who wish to play important roles to prove to the decision-maker that they're capable of playing over an extended period in a way that conforms to the vision of the game.

Editing to Add: In case it's not clear, I am not currently engaged in anything like this. There are no concepts that I can approve that are restricted in any way. The only restricted things I deal with are plot/NPC concepts, which are much looser as they are short term and temporary. This is simply my hypothetical ideal. I mentioned that before, I think, but I think it got a bit lost somewhere, because people seem to think that this is what I'm actually doing.

@The-Tree-of-Woe said:

@Misadventure said:

Who, alive today, would you blame?

People who fly the Stars and Bars or the Bonnie Blue Flag without understanding what they mean.
People who fly the Stars and Bars or the Bonnie Blue Flag who absolutely understand what they mean.
Individuals who serve or have served in the U.S. government or the military who fly either flag, doubly so.
People who build monuments to Stonewall Jackson.
People who name bridges, schools, or hospitals after confederate generals.
People who refuse to admit their state turned traitor over the right to own slaves, even after you read said state's secession declaration aloud, to them.
People who support Voter ID laws.
People who use gerrymandering to put a political stranglehold on any area with a large minority population.
Politicians who punish participants in SNAP for a statistically insignificant amount of fraud instead of coming down on the crooked shop owners who must be in on it for SNAP fraud to happen, at all, period.

It's a long list. I blame them. I absolutely blame them.

Your list here is slightly contradictory. The stars and bars are a symbol of States' rights, not a pro-slavery tribute, though since we're taught in school now that the Civil War was about slavery (which it was not) that's an understandable attitude. You can't completely suppress a piece of american history that's important for the development of the current nation and still expect to build a foundation for an argument based on an outcome of that part of history. So, like... you're arguing on both sides of the fence, here.