Posts made by Devrex

@Misadventure Congrats indeed! And now please excuse me, I need to go spend some money on Thirsty Sword Lesbians.

@faraday Yeah I'm not dissing Ares, I'm frustrated that forum-culture seems to seep into a lot of Ares games. I'm fine if a scene takes 3 days to a week to finish. I'm fine if poses take hours. I start losing all my enthusiasm if it takes more than a month to do one scene.

Personally, I've come to be a bit less enamored of the whole "character advancement" as an inherent part of RPGs in general. I get that it's baked in deep, but I think that a lot of games (especially MU games where the PCs represent a much broader swathe of the population) you don't need to have every character at the start of a bildungsroman.

Might be on to something here. @Derp maybe starting characters at a higher level, and then combine it with "you can advance your character once a year with a set amount of XP" or something to combine it with the character arc idea. Would be an interesting experiment to run.

@Tirit said in Artificially Slowing Character Growth:

First personally and in experience I've had I don't think players being at different rates matter much unless it comes to PvP.

It matters a little. If I go into a scene with someone who is XP maxed and I'm there as a near-starting character I start to feel some serious "why am I here, then?" I hate feeling pointless or useless in scenes or groups.

@Hella Just being able to leave a scene and come back to it.

It's a double-edged sword though...because a lot of times players are like "oh hey it's cool if this scene takes three months, right?" whether you set it as "async" or not, thus slowing down the whole game and sucking the energy right out of it. It's like the culture of Ares has shifted from MUSH to forum-based RP...which is awful, because forum-based RP is universally too friggin' slow to get anywhere.

It's not like there on every Ares game, but the phenomenon has killed a few of them.

@Derp I really like needing some sort of justification for XP spends. That's how I generally try to spend XP anyway. But I don't know if logs are the only way to do it. My character is doing stuff during all the hours I'm not playing.

Something like Modern Nights' Downtime system might offer some solutions there. For example, if my character is out there actively practicing how to be a better driver but I can't have a scene around that because...that's not necessarily going to be a great scene for anyone else...well, perhaps I could spend my Downtime to buy that Drive stat.

Though admittedly...that is a lot of dadgum paperwork and so @Ghost might be right...just having an "You may only raise this stat again in X days" system hardcoded right in might be the only sensible answer.

@Selira By now a LOT of people have come and done this. If you feel that your posts were not sarcastic, not aggressive, not pointed, not accusatory, and not cruel, great, guess you're in the clear. I could start going through this thread to find specific instances from all the posts that have bothered me but I frankly do not have the energy. Maybe all the folks who got aggressive truly don't believe they did, but holy wow did a lot of them come across as aggressive and cruel, even before I read their counterparts on the other thread...a move I sincerely regret making.

@Arkandel Neither. You're coming over here and having reasonable discussions. I don't care if people post on both boards.

I mean the specific users who come to this board, engage in sarcasm, engage in lots of accusations and poking and saying rude and awful stuff, and then when that is answered, mostly in a measured way, I might add, go back over there to accuse specific users over here of being rapists, rape-apologists, rape rape rape rape, stalkers, etc. etc. etc., while adding a few more gems along the way.

If you don't do that, which you don't, you're not who I am talking about.

Really I need to stop looking at BMD; a few times posts have been brought to my attention and I've taken a breath and gone to see to see if I could get context, but the stuff going on right over here is enough. The aggressive sarcasm, name calling, all that stuff, is happening right over here. I don't care what is done over there, ultimately, but I'd like to be left alone over here, I'd like the rest of our users to be left alone over here, I'd like to go back to where we were 2 months ago where all this was not happening. It didn't start happening till a few folks got bored and came over here to see if they couldn't provoke us into saying stuff they could yell about.

"There are 2 forums, and it appears that most of the people who dislike each other are on separate forums. So why so much reaching across the aisle to ensure that you're continuing to interact with people you don't like?"

And, I say this respectfully, I skimmed past a lot of the personal insults and whatnot on BMD, and it doesn't appear that BMD has a problem with people from here coming over there to insult them, sooo....what's the point of this? Is it okay if people try to discuss this topic without being attacked, or what?

This. So much this. When I dare to read BMD...I wouldn't post on there if paid...or when some of these folks come over here...what I see is:

• Lots of virulent insults...the one that really stuck with me was mouth making ass cheek flapping sounds, just...vile stuff.
• Lots of hyperbolic accusations that paint everyone here in just the darkest possible terms regardless of whether there's any grounding in reality for those accusations.
• Aggressiveness and sarcasm aimed pointedly at specific people.
• Extreme distortions, such as characterizing "You're intelligent but I don't agree with your behavior right now" as a...personal attack? Really? A compliment as a personal attack? What?

It's gotten to the point where I HAVE considered just begging people to leave us alone. If we're really so awful then it would make no sense to continue interacting with us would it? Why would any of them want to be unbanned? This makes no sense and I know that it is seriously hurting people at this point.

The worst I think that's been said, by contrast, at this point, is that bullying is taking place, and I mean...name-calling, accusations, tossing up old baggage, sarcasm, sneering, aggressiveness, etc. etc. is bullying behavior. It does not make the person engaging in the behavior an irrevocable bully, it does not make THEM a thing but it does state that the BEHAVIOR is bullying behavior.

The other thing that has been said, repeatedly, is that the bans were the result of failing to ignore repeated warnings and requests to stop engaging in a behavior, but it keeps getting twisted into other stuff. But ultimately it baffles as to why anyone would protest the bans or want to come back.

There's so much cross-talk going on that it's not even funny, when we could just be at peace in separate dadgum forums.

Instead it's just. Poke. Poke. Poke. Virulent insults! Poke. Poke. Poke. Accusations! Poke poke poke poke! WHY?

The ones who hate us now have every opportunity and tool to go hate us over there. We're not bothering you. Stop bothering us, stop insulting us, stop accusing us. The moment you guys leave us be we will no longer be talking about any y'all, as evinced by the two flaming months where we did not talk about any of y'all. We had other things we wanted to talk about. If you feel the community at large needs to be warned about us because we don't share your views then I think the 1100+ posts y'all got over on BMD have adequately warned whomever you feel needs to know.

Irony: some of the behavior you're warning people about on these players you're saying are soooooooooo terrible is...folks who wouldn't LEAVE YOU ALONE when ASKED REPEATEDLY TO LEAVE YOU ALONE.

Oh hey, that's what a buncha y'all were banned for too. Pot and kettle, anyone?

Just. Sod OFF already.

@Misadventure said in What Would it Take to Repair the Community?:

@Derp & @GreenFlashlight

I want to hear well-spoken and crafted arguments on many sides of any topic.

I don't care if it changes minds, that is very rare. (Again, RL says 30% conversion rate would be stunning).

I appreciate hearing this, because most of the time I feel like I'm just...beating my head bloody on a brick wall whenever I post stuff.

@Misadventure I can at least give you an example of public information sharing. On a game I was on many many years ago we set up "police files" for the law enforcement players. They had a format, they were IC info for everyone, and most players really did use them and update them. They were on livejournal, making it easy to comment on one another's cases, though the link was posted in the faction bb. To-do lists got posted which suggested RP scenes that anyone could pick up and do, and there was very little overlap (that is, I can't think of any times where two people went to do the same to-do item).

I'm not sure that would work at all times and in all cases, but it worked very well in that specific time and in that specific place.

I personally like having the pass/fail result check prompts, I know that the ST can always suggest something different or I can offer something different, but guidance sometimes really helps. And I'm goal oriented, so I know I personally like setting goals to go after too, and enjoy getting XP for doing so. But that's less "this has been really successful!" and more "I really liked it."

Beginning from the assumption that a victim's story must be litigated is indistinguishable from beginning from the assumption that victims are liars until proven innocent.

Strong disagree. Beginning from the assumption that an allegation requires additional inquiry is beginning from the assumption that I the admin do not yet know the facts. All I have is a statement. It's probably true, absolutely, but if you read what I said about having been manipulated in the past into taking actions against the abused by an abuser with a sob story, you will see that earnest good actors can care about discovering the truth, no more, no less. You presuppose an opinion or a judgement call on the reporter when that's just not always the case.

Yes, there is a systemic problem wherein victims are blamed and reporters go unheeded. I will grant you this. I am sorry that you are hurt, angry, and, apparently, feeling threatened by the idea that there should be some inquiry. But inquiry itself is not the source of the systemic problem. The source of the systemic problem is the shitty cultural soup that we're all swimming around in, breathing, and the answer to that is to be aware that those biases exist and to be as impartial as you can be, not to say, "Oh shit, Green Flashlight talked smack about Player X, I must believe this unconditionally without so much as seeing a log."

@Derp @Tirit IDK, Kiddo (age 21) is basically doing what we do, text based, just not on the same platforms. And sometimes they do rando voice scenes while playing some other game that are akin to MU* social scenes.

IDK where he finds his RP partners (possibly Discord?), and all their conventions seem to be a little different, but he'd also rather spork out his eyes than RP with someone my age (45) or anyone in the vicinity of being my age, and has stated that knowing a game was full of parent-age people would be a great reason to stay off it as far as he is concerned. Every generation finds its own path, I guess!

To what end?

Due process is meant to guarantee the rights of the accused; however, no player has any cognizable right on any game, save for what is promised by staff. Staff who think they can adequately or properly investigate a situation in a manner that promptly and completely addresses it is kidding themselves or lying to players. Games by design are at best benevolent dictatorships and at worst a god-fantasy out of Black and White. So the only reason anyone would want to follow an investigatory procedure is doing so to protect their own sense of self-righteousness.

If the best one can hope to be is a beloved tyrant, it serves no purpose to pretend to be anything else.

I disagree with this premise. In the past, as a game runner, I tended to overreact to the first person who brought me their sad sad story, empathizing with them immediately, and bringing down the hammer with very little to no investigation...exactly the behavior that quite a few individuals say they want.

Later I discovered that by failing to get all sides of the story, I had actually played into the designs of bad actors, sent some of their victims packing, and sent a message to the other victims that I would back this person's word, making them feel even more trapped.

So maybe I'm lying to myself, I'll grant it's possible, but my particular motivation is not wanting to make that particular mistake again, and not wanting to play into the hands of actual abusers again.

It also grows out of the place where I started gaming: tabletops. Where the GM has the responsibility to adjudicate the rules fairly and to handle problem players. At heart I'm still just a GM, with a slightly different table, and to me adjudicating fairly requires that I know what the heck is actually going on in the first place. And not allowing myself to be manipulated because I can't slow down to do a little due diligience.

YMMV of course, and I'm not denying that staff often does a fat lot of nothing. Which is why I say...not all game runners are equally talented at all aspects of game running. Or equally principled. Or are even coming from the same places in where they feel they've made mistakes and created bad outcomes in the past.

@Tirit I think you're doing as much as it's possible to actually do. We're nerds running games. We're not trained investigators. And even trained investigators make mistakes.

The hyperbole that anyone who makes a mistake in an earnest investigation attempt or in the crafting of a policy just loves abusers and wants to protect them is inaccurate. Sorting through the thorny tangle of the interactions of people is a very difficult thing to do. All you can do is your best.

All places will also have to figure out where they are in the spectrum between "wild west, enter at your own risk" and "big brother." All players will have to decide what steps they'll take to protect themselves in these environments as well. (This is not victim blaming. If you get hurt cause your RL information gets out there we still blame the bad guy who hurt you. I'm still going to Dad at folks and say remember you're on the Internet and giving away personal information is risky behavior. I say this having given away personal information to online people who have become RL friends).

I, too, am really struggling with "how do we call out the true dangers while avoiding character assassination" and I haven't reached a coherent philosophy on that one yet.

Only to say:

• None of us truly knows the history of most of the others here and assuming that everyone who is leery of the character assassination game has never been abused or has never faced trauma is dismissive and unkind.
• This is not a war of the sexes thing. Quite a few of the most famous abusers have been women. I know of quite a few men who have been abused.
• It is not all on the heads of game runners. And not all game runners are equally talented in all aspects of game running.
• It would be nice to make a distinction between, wow, yeah, that was a really boneheaded move you made while you weren't thinking clearly and you probably deserved to be banned from that one game, here's hoping you do better on your next and here is a person who is literally life destroying who needs to be driven out of the community. Right now they're being treated as exactly the same thing and they're really not.
• Wanting to be measured about evidence or investigative responses is not the same thing as protecting abusers even if it did not work in an individual's favor on an individual game. To be clear, yes, corroborating testimony is evidence, it is just weaker evidence than logs and such. A game runner has the responsibility to thoughtfully consider all evidence and to investigate all claims, (as you, @Tirit, yourself just said). The game runner also has the responsibility to know that false accusations, character assassinations, and whisper campaigns are a thing and to do the best they can.

What we could sure all do with a lot less of though is the virulent sarcasm, the snarky name calling, and the howling hyperbole that is coming from certain quarters. Nor do we really need to rehash non-dangerous but foolish behavior over and over again; let the banning that dealt with such behavior be the end of it. Nobody should have to wear a scarlet letter for years on end for milder bad behaviors, yet that seems to be what happens.

I think also some of the competitiveness about a character taking over another player's "niche" has to do with MUSH rising out of tabletops.

In a tabletop, if Player A takes a wizard you don't take the wizard, you take the cleric or the rogue or the fighter. It's the same impulse that has people asking "what does the game need?"

And when sometimes opportunities to get involved and get the good RP (which I define as the story-based RP or deep character-development RP that would not be edited out of the book or movie, as opposed to sort of random-aimless-small talk RP that you mostly have to suffer through to get to the good RP) are limited, when someone comes in and wants to fill the same niche, I think it's not...entirely just due to being shitty to sort of tense up and go, "Great, what if my RP group no longer needs or wants me cause Captain Shiny New Guy can do everything I can do? I'm super screwed."

It's not always being aggressive and mean. And of course the onus is on the old player to manage their own feelings about new guy, it's not new guy's fault, but...that's where some of this arises from, and knowing that can help sort of the game as a whole find ways to sort of...be reassuring to the fact that there can be two characters with the exact same character build and everyone can still have a good time.

@kk I'm a 5'5" guy, and while I just go with whatever height my PB is I am happy as all get out to get some one who is 6'2" and up. c_c

@kk Of course it’s ok to do some wish fulfillment! I think it boils down to how that is balanced against other aspects of the RP and how considerate you are of other players. I surely have wish fulfillment going on with all my characters even when I try to make them different from me. They are all hotter and tougher than me.

You can do just about anything if the attitude behind what you are doing is right. People can pick up on that. If you care about others fun you are usually golden.

@ghost This is exactly why I favor dice but also encourage that it's okay for people to step up OOCly to say "Hey can we negotiate a little here."

Not about whether your gun hits me, but "Ok that was definitely a hit, you're badass, but I don't want to lose my character, can I take it in the knee and can we work out some reason why your character has to leave rather than double tapping?" I think that's a pretty reasonable thing to do.

Or as @Tirit noted: "Ok happy to go to prison but you're not going to leave me there with zero RP right?"

The presence of dice don't demand that we throw the negotiation baby out with the consent bathwater. The absence of dice, sadly, tends to send babies and baths and everything in between straight into the fire. I've seen some awesome pure cooperative storytelling, but it was the result of a very large group of RL friends playing together and getting very excited about selling one another...not something I would expect to occur, organically, in a million years, on most games.

@misadventure Oh the latter, just prompts. I don't know, like maybe the flight attendant armed with a sonic toothbrush comes up with some really great idea. That person knows their character's strengths and if they can use them in a way I can't think of for myself then right on. If they can pull off the rolls they gotta pull off, equally right on. If the rolls go bad, I proceed with making their character's day that much more complicated. I might raise an eyebrow when the non-combat glass jaw shows up at a scene that I think looks like heavy combat, but if they can find a reason to be there and a way to contribute, great.

Now what I do get irritated at is when Captain McGlass Jaw gets mad at me for not coming up with some specific way for Captain McGlass Jaw to shine. Like...dude that's your job, I'm over here being the rain and the engines and the guy with the gun, you tell me how you Awesome.