Posts made by Derp

@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.

@kanye-qwest said in GMs and Players:

@derp said in GMs and Players:

@sunny

I know that we're in Mildly Constructive or whatever, but it was pretty plainly a passive-aggresive move to try and undermine the original point, and I'm definitely not alone in that reading.

You weren't used. You did a thing and got called out. Deal.

I don't think you've been constructive a day in your life, but this really isn't the place for your condescension.

Good thing I don't actually need your permission then, huh?

As others in this thread have demonstrated, it was a fair reading of the (apparently now deleted?) post, and when it was called out as such, she took offense to it and tried to turn it back on everyone else instead of just owning that it came off as unnecessarily aggro. Your approval of that isn't actually relevant to -- well, anything.

@faraday

Alright. I mean, I don't have an issue with that if the GM wants to make it feel like their living room or whatever.

But should that be the baseline? Should we expect that every GM on every game is going to be the personal friend of every player? Or should we establish as a baseline idea that this is just another service, and you all are strangers that have accepted certain terms related to services rendered?

That's kind of the thing that's throwing me here. If we're talking about establishing reasonable boundaries, then I think we need to talk about that one in particular because, honestly, if you come into my game expecting me to be your bestie, instead of the dude running the game, we're both gonna have a bad time.

I think this idea of 'my living room' and this whole community of friends or whatever is a step above baseline that GMs can take, but shouldn't be the expected status quo.

So I wasn't sure whether to put this here or RL Things I Love, so I opted for here because it's more specific:

I take a (really pretty optional) medication that the details of aren't super important.

What's important is, I got a new version of this medication -- one that my insurance pharmacy stuff apparently doesn't cover.

They approved my claim and are like 'congrats! You owe us $1600 for a one month supply, but we put it toward your deductible of 2000 and your out of pocket maximum of 3500'.

...for a medication that I don't actually pay for anyway and only turned into insurance because there was a spot on the website for insurance.

Thanks, insurance company, for not covering a med I get for free and putting me that much closer to not having to pay for anything else this year. Appreciated!

@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.

@sunny

I know that we're in Mildly Constructive or whatever, but it was pretty plainly a passive-aggresive move to try and undermine the original point, and I'm definitely not alone in that reading.

You weren't used. You did a thing and got called out. Deal.

@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.

@krmbm said in GMs and Players:

I've definitely never paged Zuckerberg and asked him if he could give me any pointers for getting involved in the plot.

Because that's not what Zuck is there for.

And that's kind of our point.

You don't page Zuck about how to get involved in MU plot and you don't page a MU admin about your off-game interpersonal issues with another player unless they become an issue of game rules.

@reimesu has already seen us take action against players. we're not averse to it. But she brought us evidence and laid out a case and we said 'ok, here is what we are going to do', and laid out a path to be followed. The same as we would do for anyone else.

@mietze said in GMs and Players:

I also think it is apt and also telling that in the mcdonald's example, the person with the history of being abused is "yelling" and acting crazy (instead of just turning around and leaving, which is the much more likely response on a game) while the person who is stated to be the abuser is "chill". How many times do we see that play out on games, where the "chill" dude just is so awesome, these crazy jealous chicks are always trying to get him in trouble.

Sunny was free to turn around and walk out of the game if her ex husband showed up. I'm not going to stop her.

That wasn't the example she used. And I altered her example to make it a restaurant instead of a MU.

And in that example, she wasn't reporting abusive behavior that occurred on the game, which is a very different beast. Which is the point we're trying to make. How she's perceived isn't actually all that relevant, because I'm not interested in how she and other dude feel about each other or what their interpersonal dynamics are. I'm interested to know what happened, substantively, that is against our rules, which our in-game tools report quite easily.

I don't have to like you to take action against someone being a douchebag.

@bear_necessities said in GMs and Players:

would pick up the phone and call the police and put the woman somewhere where she can feel safe. It's like, the very basic of what a decent human being would do even if it's not expressly in your job title or whatever.

Yeah, you would call the police because the police are there to deal with shit like that. Which is also kind of the point.

@faraday

Oh, I'm with you on that one.

My thinking was more for like -- we have seen, on this forum even, people demanding that staff take action based on off-game discord conversations.

And then there are examples like @Sunny's where there are expectations based on someone just telling you something, with no evidence of it whatsoever, and expecting them to take action on it for something that has not happened / happened in some other context entirely outside of the game.

I'm telling both of those people "no, you need to figure this out, but here are our rules so. Stay within the lines."

But it seems that isn't considered a reasonable response. Which -- I mean, I disagree, and it's not gonna hurt my feelings if people think it's unreasonable, but it seems to be becoming a more widespread idea, and it's a little disturbing.

@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.

@tinuviel said in GMs and Players:

I honestly don't care if it happens elsewhere, I just don't want to approve of it happening elsewhere.

This is a good point. But it wasn't quite my original point. Which is that there are a certain subset of players that expect staff to adjudicate the behavior/content/whatever of player interactions that happen in other media. Like Discord.

So you and Bob do a naughty little TS on Discord. Whatever, I don't care. But then a week later you send me a screenshot presumably of Bob calling you a dirty <swear word of some kind> (because we are in mildly constructive).

What am I supposed to do with this?

I can't verify it. It didn't even happen anywhere I have any control over.

But you want me to take actions against Bob because, presumably, he was mean to you or whatever. Even though for all I know you just straight up doctored that conversation which, in an earlier conversation, we saw was remarkably easy to do.

What then? Because I tacitly gave a nod of approval to 'yeah I am not going to explicitly ban you from doing a thing I cannot prevent you from doing anyway' I am now supposed to play the judge of the thing I couldn't stop you from doing had I wanted to?

There has to be reasonable lines beyond which -- there be dragons, yo, and if you go get eaten by one, then. I don't know what to do for you.

@misadventure said in GMs and Players:

Are the alternate forms of RP acceptable, for what kinds of scenes: alternate window rp, paged rp, on game mail RP, forum RP, email RP, etc?

brake screech sound

Noooooo. Nonononono.

God, we've already seen what happens when staff refuses to act on some kind of easily-faked Discord screenshot that someone claims is someone else being abusive.

Nobody should encourage off-game RP. There is no good way to police that in the event of a dispute even though apparently people think that GMs are supposed to police shit that happens off the game.

This just sounds like all kinds of a bad idea.

@ganymede said in Decriminalise Pretty:

@runescryer said in Decriminalise Pretty:

However, you've inspired me to do another PoP binge through while waiting for Tiger & Bunny Season 2 to drop on Netflix in April...

I'm going back through LoK because Korra is my boo.

I need to finish Korra. Is it on Netflix?

@arkandel said in Decriminalise Pretty:

my player can use a thesaurus knows what a thesaurus is.

The number of times I've seen someone use some listed synonym in precisely the wrong way outweighs the number of times they have used it correctly.

Thesaurus Abuse is real.

@hedgehog

There. New red boxes.

@hedgehog said in Notifications Issues.:

For a long while now, if I have notifications, the red number shows up, but the notifications never load; it just spins and spins and spins. I kludged a workaround once I realised that the dropdown menu lets you see all your notifications, not just the most recent, but I am stupid and it took me until a couple of weeks ago to figure that out. Yay me, I wound up missing a few personal messages I got sent because of the inability to read a drop down menu.

Anyway, right now I have a pretty, red, number one showing on my bell, that also isn't clearing, since I read the notification using the 'show all' option.

Have you tried clearing cookies and such or doing a hard reset with Ctrl+F5? Something might be not playing nicely between the saved stuff and the current stuff.

@juniper said in Decriminalise Pretty:

I hear a lot that the more simulationist type MU*s are filled with unpleasant people,

I guess I don't know what this means.

Can you give an example?

Because my experience runs completely counter to this. If your PB isn't hot, you get docked for RP points.

@macha said in The Work Thread:

@tnp It's just this woman insisted I was wrong, and that all there was, is MEDICARE. She refused to listen to me telling her there's... a lot of plans for it.

Ohhhhh, see, the way I was reading that it was the other way, so I think I got tripped up on the same thing TNP probably did.

@ganymede said in Final Fantasy:

Final Fantasy X-II can eat a bullet, in my books.

Although not as big a bullet at XIII-3 because what the fuck did you people do to that game? Gah. No. Just. NO.

@greenflashlight

Almost. IIRC, yes, the Eidolons do give you selective amnesia but that wasn't why they didn't remember. They didn't remember because Ultimecia fucked around with the timestream, so none of them remebered Edea being the mistress of the orphanage because that timeline ceased to exist for all intents and purposes.

Eight did a lot of weird stuff with time, but it was still a good game. I replay it regularly.