Posts made by Derp

@Rook said in Identifying Major Issues:

I want to say here that I think that a lot of games are friend-boxes, not run like a business like many of the playerbase would prefer.

Here is where I have to disagree with you. As a current staffer on two moderate-sized games, I've seen players that I would have considered problems before, but the problem comes in two parts:

Part one, Section A -- The people who end up complaining about these people are in and of themselves guilty of some major crap. Take for example our legendary 'Creeper Player'. In many of these that I have investigated, the person doing the complaining to staff has been going along with what our supposed creeper is throwing out there, laughing and making the doe-eyes and egging it on themselves. I will not punish a player for taking actions that he thought were acceptable by another player, period. If he has no reason to believe that his actions are unwelcome, and he's taking his cues from another person/people (often people, plural), and nobody has given him the slightest indication that this is unwelcome? I'm not your momma. Talk to the guy. Let them know that you aren't comfortable with it. Don't lead them on further. But I absolutely will not punish someone for doing something that they had no indication was out of bounds.

Part one, Section B -- If there are other players out there having a problem they're largely unwilling to speak up. Unwilling to file complaints, unwilling to submit logs, etc. And I'm not going to punish a player based on a rumor mill and hearsay, either. I don't care what you claim he did, show me what he did. Your story is only one side of it, and there are other ways that it can be interpreted. Sorry if it makes you uncomfortable that staff won't take actions unless we have something logged, or similar, that we can use to say 'this right here is a definite violation of the rules', but someone 'making you feel weird' can either be a creeper player or you having a bad day and misreading something. I've seen it before. I won't be a part of crucifying a potentially innocent player because someone's gang of folks says they're a creeper, but won't show me any logs or anything for it.

TL;DR -- It goes both ways. If you want staff to do shit, then be willing to give staff what they need to do it. We don't operate on hearsay and rumors. If we did, then it sure would be a friendbox. MU's are run more professionally than you might think, and often, the distinction between 'mild' and 'extreme' isn't as brightline as you'd like to think. One person's 'extreme' is another person's 'relatively innocuous', as MSB has shown us countless times. Which brings me to:

Part 2 -- One person's 'serious problem' is another person's 'not even remotely a problem'. That's just the reality of the situation. There are some games with cultures, etc, that just aren't suited for everyone. I think that most games fall under this category. If I'm running a game? It's going to be gritty and dark and not at all rainbows and sunshine, and will deal with mature/adult themes and scenarios that other people here have been very vocal about not wanting to deal with. And that's fine. As someone up above said, games are intended for a target audience. If you're having serious issues with a game? Perhaps you are not a part of their target audience. Wherein lies the problem? You or the game?

These things just aren't as simple, and don't fall as neatly into the little boxes, as we'd like to believe on places like MSB. And games will almost always have players. Maybe not a three-page-long WHO screen, but seriously, who actually wants that? That takes significant overhead and work that most of us don't have time for. There is nothing wrong with a smaller game set for a specific target audience, but for all we come on here and talk about how that's a good thing, ,we sure do like to come up with the most cookie cutter ideas of what 'problematic stuff' is. It's counterproductive. There will always be divisions within the hobby. All we can do, realistically, is find out what works for the game we want to run, and run it that way.

@A.-Meowley said in CofD and Professional Training:

Major caveat: anything to do with seduction and PCs. If both Players haven't consented to this? Fuck. That. Noise. Use that shit on NPCs if you must, and throw it in between consenting players for funsies if you want to randomize how suave/gawky your PCs are acting in the moment, but for the love of Glob, don't pull that nonsense on the unsuspecting. Maaaaajorly creepy x infinity

My ow two cents here -- seduction doesn't have to be about sex. I agree that it shouldn't be an easy ticket to TS, or whatever, but these should be equally valid just based on intrigue. Seduction is a valid way to convince someone to do something. While, sure, some creepers just use it as a sort of 'Fuck Me' Golden Ticket, there are other ways in which this can be used which are perfectly justifiable. Seduction, for instance, has been successfully employed by KGB agents to recruit people into affairs. They even had names for people specifically trained to do this (women were Swallows, men were Ravens). So really, there has to be some leeway given even in these situations, but you have to have staffers that are willing to draw a line in the sand as well. The problem with this is twofold, however. You surely have the creepers who use this, but you also have the players who are just staunchly unwilling to go along with it for whatever reason, even when the dice and circumstances and whatnot all say that this should be a valid outcome.

So, really... how do we solve this in a way that makes the actual art of seduction useful for game purposes?

@The-Sands said in CofD and Professional Training:

But what about allowing those bonuses for non-combat skills?

You know, if there were ways to influence the world around you through these skills, especially on a MU, I'd be less against PT. But since Mental and Social combat is largely ignored on most MU settings, and is held as a cardinal sin if used against a PC because 'omg my agency', this makes using it for the physical skills -even more- unbalancing, even if it isn't used against PCs.

Not that any WoD games currently in play forbid PvP, that I'm aware of. It doesn't have to be about PK, either. The fact that these things get way more mileage from Physical Skills is partly due to the rules of the games, and partly due to MU culture, but either way we shouldn't be encouraging this sort of unbalanced behavior unless we're going to populate every grid on every game with professional soldiers everywhere.

@Ganymede said in Fate's Harvest BETA Live (Full Open Soon):

I'm bummed because I love my character too. I check in from time to time, but very few people seem to be willing to play out in the open during my normal hours. And when that does happen, the scenes get flooded.

I'd be more than happy to play with you. Or anyone. I'm Lucky over there. Just drop me a page!

@Three-Eyed-Crow said in Android Client other than Mukluk?:

it tended to time out if I wasn't active for a stretch

This is also an android thing. It will kill non-essential data, especially if on wifi, if you have been idle for a bit. It's a feature meant to conserve battery life and prevent data overages (if not on wifi). Some models offer an option to disable this.

@Coin said in Emotional separation from fictional content:

@Coin said in Emotional separation from fictional content:

@HelloProject said in Emotional separation from fictional content:

@Derp I don't really understand the necessity of "all or nothing". Everyone having their particular preferences of what they want to play and what they don't want to play is basically RP 101.

Just straight up dictating what objectively does or doesn't happen in the world just seems kind of bizarre and heavy-handed to me. I'm not sure why expecting people to be adults, which has literally been the cornerstone of every good MU I've ever played, is so outrageous that one needs to finely dictate in IC terms why certain events don't happen. That's just kind of really weird.

Like, plenty of games say "We don't accept these kinds of themes", but they don't go "Oh this never happens 'cause unicorn magic" or something. That's just lazy writing in my opinion.

Can you imagine if Full House went out of its way to explain why there is a lack of brutal murder in the series?

This may be the single most coherent post/thought I've ever seen you present.

And the Full House analogy is spot on.

Except it was not, because that's not what I was saying.

Look, it's not that hard, guys. I'm saying that you cannot, as staff, say in your theme 'the world is a dark and terrible place full of murder and violence and rape. Roving bands of privateers take slaves of those too weak to fend for themselves. Food is scarce, so cannibalism is on the rise.

The world is a Dark and Scary Place. Except for here in Sunny Oasis, that is, where such things never occur!

You can't sell the world as a dark and violent place and all that and then say 'this will never happen on grid'. It's a thematic bait and switch. You set the expectation up in the player's minds that this is what they are getting, and then never show them any of that, or even allow them to show their own expectation of it. Someone's gonna want the slavers. Someone's gonna want the cannibals. And them bringing that on grid is entirely reasonable because you've already established that this is what the world is like.

It's easier to just say 'we do not want to see these kinds of things', period, point blank, rather than trying to go on some lengthy thing about why, yes, it's out there, but it's not -here-. One sets up an expectation that it can be encountered, when it really can't. The other just flat-out denies it without having to do a highwire tapdance about how you magically avoid it -always-.

@surreality said in Emotional separation from fictional content:

@Derp There's a hard line 'no child sex on grid for any reason' policy. I'm not concerned about that one, to be honest. It happens in our world today, too -- but even Shang doesn't allow people to roleplay this, so I don't feel obligated to permit it to occur on screen, either.

Is it a thing that exists in the world? Yes. It exists in ours, too, today. Maybe there's a game that would permit someone to RP this in a plot or similar? I don't know of any off hand, though, and it's as relevant to any modern day game as it would be on that one.

I'm sorry, I think I may have misworded what I was trying to get across here. Ok, let me try this another way.

Alternative Hypothesis: By stating up front that these things happen in the world, you add a certain level of acceptance of those things on the part of the players, who expect that they will have to interact with these things in some way. In creating the expectation that they will interact with them (or, at the very least, that it is probably interaction of this nature could occur, whether or not it ever happens), you create a reality not just for the world, but for what the players expect to find on the grid.

If you don't want something on the game, then it's probably for the best to come up with some reason why these things will never happen, period, rather than saying 'they happen, just not here'. By acknowledging that these are themes that could come up -at all-, you in some level translate that into expectations of what could occur on the grid. Trying to build it into the world but off of the grid/screen/whatever creates weird cognitive dissonance where you know these things occur but for some reason they never occur in this little bubble here, and then other players will eventually try and ensure that some of those things occur to give a more world-like feel to the grid structure. It's an issue of expectations management, really, while trying to not break immersion.

If something is verboten, it's best to just say 'you will not experience this', rather than say 'it's out there, but not here'. Does that make more sense?

@surreality said in Emotional separation from fictional content:

The game I'm planning has a setting that involves chattel slavery, forced prostitution, murder, rampant sexism, racism, and homophobia, death cults, spirit possession, death from horrifying diseases, children being sold to brothels as early as the age of 8 in its era (though this WILL NOT BE happening on grid it does happen in the larger world and is known to be a thing).

Yeah. So. I pretty much stopped right here on this one and considered this for a minute.

No matter what, if it happens in the world, it can happen on the grid. Like, point blank. If you make this an okay thing in the world, players can expect that it will be an okay thing in the game. You might have an area where this is verboten, but players will find ways to leave that area, and when these things come up...

...you've already said that it happens in the world.

So I think that this line of thought might have a tiny flaw. You can't really say 'these things happen in the world but they never happen on grid'. That doesn't really seem like a realistic benchmark to set.

Scammer

Tanners

@Ganymede said in State of Things:

@surreality said in State of Things:

And those consequences are almost never, ever for them. Which is intensely frustrating.

This is why I'm pro-Nazi-punching.

Seriously. Punch them. Hard.

Will you defend us in court when the Man ultimately collars one of us? Because I will totally go on a nazi punching spree if I know I have decent representation.

@Coin said in CofD and Professional Training:

since neither Cardiology nor Surgery are progressions of each other.

Except that's just your interpretation of it. Given that both of them use medicine, cardiology could easily be seen as a specific subset of surgery, which in itself is a specific subset of medicine. So yeah, they could logically follow in exactly that manner. Just because you don't see one as a progression of the other doesn't mean that others don't, or the writers didn't.

Or surgery could be a subset of cardiology. Either way, the actual thing you are doing is a very focused subset of the overall skill, which is reflected in your specializations. And the reason they stack. You are very good at this one specific thing. But the key words here are specialization and specific -- specializations should be, you know. Specialized. Not the overly broad stuff we see that are just re-names of the skill.

To me, specialty stacking implies additional levels of specialization. So to use a fairly blah example:

Brawl: Street Fighting --> Cheap Shot
Weaponry: Knives --> Butterfly Knives
Academics: Philosophy --> Postmodernism --> 20th Century German Postmodernists

It implies that you are progressively narrowing your field of focus until you're very, very good with that one thing.

As for 'there are not a lot of things that grant mortals 9/8-again', bullshit. Sorry, but it is. Many firearms have these qualities, for instance, as well as do some less-gun-type weapons. There are merits that can give you 9-again on a range of things. The options are out there. They just tend to have a particular focus, and aren't quite as broad as some supernatural powers.

@HelloProject said in Computer Science:

@Jim-Nanban This is actually very helpful, and a part of my interest in computer science and such. So I think that I -can- gain something out of using MUSHCode, to be honest.

Honestly, MU code is one of the harder programming languages I've seen. It'll really force you to look at how, specifically, something needs to happen (from a data-manipulation standpoint) from beginning to end, and it will punish you if you do it wrong. Which makes it an excellent thing to learn when it comes to general data handling things and problem-solving skills.

@Arkandel said in State of Things:

The consequences of the worst laws I break are at best marginal. Shooting a guy who's no threat to me (or covering it up for my buddy who did) isn't remotely on the same level as jaywalking. I don't understand what argument you're trying to make there - those things aren't comparable.

Aren't they? You say that the consequences of the worst laws you break are marginal. But how do you know that they don't feel the same way? What 'marginal' effects would you say that these laws have? Speed limits exist for good reasons, both for urban planning and public safety. One might say that the consequences of you breaking those laws are a bit more than marginal, especially if it becomes public perception that this is the norm.

'No threat to them' is also very subjective. Studies have shown, time and again, that civilians placed in the same situation are often the most liable to shoot first. The trained officers tend to not shoot quite so easily.

So yes, these things are entirely comparable, because they're completely subjective. Whatever mental processes you go through in your mind to justify your actions are also the ones that they go through.

And if you've ever taken an oath of citizenship, or done a pledge of allegiance, haven't you sworn to uphold those same laws, at least in principle? What does it matter if you carry a gun?

@Arkandel said in State of Things:

Breaking the law they are sworn to uphold is too much.

Do you really think it's that simple, though? I mean, realistically, how many laws would you say you break every day? Speeding? Jaywalking? Perhaps littering? Do you always do everything you're legally required to do in a timely manner? Etc.

The law, and the importance of various laws, are nebulous in the eyes of most, and should not be confused with justice. What if the procedure allows a child rapist to go free, even though there is a mountain of evidence against him? What if that knife wasn't technically found according to all the proper warrants, but is clearly the murder weapon and has fingerprints on it? Etc.

What if those laws are morally indefensible, such as laws that enforce discrimination that haven't been swatted down by a court? They do exist, I promise. We still see them crop up. There are heated debates on both sides of the laws about which restrooms transgender people can use. Do you think the police have no personal opinion on that? Or that those opinions might affect their reasoning?

Police are human too. The're not Justice-bots. And just like we do, they can often justify breaking a law when it's convenient (like we do when we mentally justify speeding) or serves a 'more noble' purpose. Things aren't always that clear-cut. And while I agree, in a perfect system, this kind of thing shouldn't happen, we're not talking about a perfect system.

It's just really not quite so bright line. There are so many shades of gray. Every one is situational, and whether an action is 'right' or 'wrong' largely depends on perspective and how invested you are in seeing a specific outcome come to pass.

@Arkandel said in State of Things:

Is the 'blue code' a real thing in your opinion? Do cops back illegal actions taken by their peers to the point of committing perjury or hiding/modifying evidence?

It's not just cops. It's everyone. Behavioral psychologist and organizational sociologists have looked at this kind of thing forever. Simply belonging to a group will generally cause a person to feel sympathetic toward that group, and make them willing to bend rules, allocate resources, or any number of other things in favor of the 'in group' versus the 'out group'. This is especially prevalent in situations where the 'out group' is seen as the enemy, like law enforcement versus criminals. One is antithetical to the other.

But yeah. In just about -any- human organization, members of a group will develop at least some degree of loyalty to other members of the group, and will take actions to protect them from harm. The real question is the extent to which it occurs. How much is too much? When does a member of the in group become a member of the out group, psychologically speaking? It's very interesting stuff. There's no doubt that it happens, but it's hard to make any kind of generalization because there is really no scope to how much it occurs.

Another thing to keep in mind here, as we snipe at each other about Black Lives Matter and Participation Trophies and whatnot...

You cannot force another person to accept your subjective perspective on these types of matters. Your perspective is, as mentioned, subjective. Just because they disagree with you, or don't view a particular social movement/phenomenon the same way that you do, doesn't make them wrong. Because there is no empirical value by which one can measure these things.

I'm one of those people who responded to Black Lives Matter with 'All Lives Matter'. Because I think that this conversation needs to be had. Being from a hispanic family, and also gay, I've seen my share of discrimination. But it never gets talked about. And what really chaps my ass is, when it does get talked about, people are quick to rally around this idea of

Well at least you don't have it as bad as the black guy.

Look, man. Fuck that. Yes, I know that blacks in this country have it rough. I've seen the studies, I've lived in the neighborhoods. We all read about this stuff in school, at length. But they aren't the only ones. People of all colors have it bad (many whites included), and it could just as easily be proven (if you're looking at the neighborhoods where they live and proportions of discrimination) that poor people have it bad. I've lived in neighborhoods where white cops treated other white people who lived there as badly as the blacks, or hispanics. Etc. Just because they were poor, and from a different sub-culture. And what's worse, in any discussion, the idea that blacks somehow have it worse, and therefore are the only ones who deserve immediate attention, is frequently used to hijack pretty much any discussion of these things.

Black Lives Matter actually reduced the awareness of a particular problem -- the police in this country are getting out of control no matter who you are, Minorities of all colors tend to have more police-related violence or incidents of rights violations, not just black people. This is a discussion we need to be having with everyone, not just one group. Yes, BLM, you are important too, but do you think for this one discussion you could try not being the divas of the show, and recognize that there is a systemic problem that expands beyond you?

Black Lives Matter did more damage than good. Studies are already showing that what should have been a productive conversation has already caused people to become desensitized to this sort of thing. And I jointly fault the media and BLM for that -- but I tend to fault BLM more. Because they pulled so many crazy antics to try and get media attention toward their specific group when a discussion about the systemic problem was already ongoing that they managed to do the thing most of us try and avoid at all costs -- they managed to look like the Divas of Discrimination, which is un-fucking-productive in the largest possible way.

Is my opinion subjective here? Yes. Do you need to agree with it? No. But there are plenty of ways that an issue can be viewed, and sniping at each other like you somehow have some kind of method to show how empirically wrong another person's subjective POV is is just stupid. It detracts from the discussion.

I love that this thread has taken on a life of its own.

Also, Kardis, if you're out there -- sorry buddy. You're never gonna live some of these down.

Omg, so, I learned a new word today:

Drachenfutter

It's a german word that means 'a gift you give someone who is angry at you to make them less angry at you'.

It literally means 'Dragon Food'.

I'm going to be using this absolutely everywhere I can think to fit it in.