Best posts made by faraday

What a nice idea.

Stores from friends (who happen to be former MUSHers):

https://store.carpediemcomics.com/ (Comic/Gaming)

https://www.imperial-supply.com/ (Geeky Gifts)

Obviously I'm kind of biased, but I think the FS3 combat system is reasonably robust. There are lots of options that give you various tactical advantages: stances, bursts, called shots, distractions, suppression, aiming, armor, vehicles... and of course the GMs can impose manual modifiers/damage and other clever tricks (akin to what @Lotherio mentioned.)

That said, combat systems, like any code, are just a tool. It's how you use them that matters. They're there to support the story, not to be the story. I've been in tons of combat scenes. The memorable ones were where there's more going on that just mowing down NPC #72. And that's tough to do when you have 15 players in a scene, just as it's tough to do much engaging storytelling when you have 15 players in a social scene. That's not really a fault of the system.

@roz said in The Work Thread:

Yeah that requires a LOT of trust for me. Because it doesn't even have to be someone being a jerk and consciously refusing to give me opportunities after giving me a raise to retain me; even an otherwise decent job can just get the seed planted in their brains that you were looking elsewhere and might again and so might give you a bit less, etc.

I mean, it works out for some folks doesn't it? Otherwise I would assume it wouldn't really even be A Thing.

It could make the bosses consider you to have your foot halfway out the door already and treat you accordingly. It could also motivate them to be like: "OMG we don't want to lose Roz, we need to start treating them better so they want to stay." Theoretically anyway. I've never tried it in practice.

But that assumes your bosses are decent humans who actually want you to stay. If you're otherwise happy in your job and just need more money, maybe it makes sense? If the reason you're job-hunting in the first place is because your workplace is toxic, then run when you have the chance. Who knows when another escape route may present itself.

@Sunny Then we disagree. That's fine.

I will agree with you that "our hobby cannot coexist with the laws" (paraphrased) is not accurate. The privacy laws are mostly about transparency and informed consent. Tell people what data you collect, how you're going to use it, and how you're going to protect it. This doesn't have to be a novel, and "staff may review anything at any time" is a perfectly valid policy (see: Blizzard) as long as people are informed and consenting to it.

@pyrephox said in The Work Thread:

Expecting school personnel to deliver instruction, or kids to receive instruction, at a comparable level when people are literally dying around them is...kind of nuts.

YES. It's like administrations everywhere are in a desperate catch up mode, without stopping to think about what they're trying to catch up to, or the fact that the emergency isn't even over yet. More than half of my kid's teachers were sick or in quarantine yesterday.

Applying pre-pandemic models of where kids "should" be at right now and expecting teachers to somehow perform magic to get them there is INSANITY. Teachers and kids deserve better.

@L-B-Heuschkel said in Privacy in gaming:

I can definitely imagine uses for private scenes that are not sexual in nature, just that you don't want everyone to barge in at random.

Yeah a lot of people use them for scenes that are just limited in scope - a gathering at your apartment, a private conversation in the restaurant, a meeting with your boss, a flashback scene, slow scenes like @Auspice mentioned, etc. Or for people like me who just get overwhelmed in big scenes and prefer to limit the number of players. Many of them even get shared afterward, they're just not 'open' while they're happening.

But in terms of privacy, the idea is that staff shouldn't be able to just drop in on or snoop on private scenes. Out of the box, Ares provides no method to do so for regular admins. You'd need someone with headwiz or coder powers to go digging through the database, or someone modifying the hardcode, or setting up a key logger, or something like that.

@silverfox said in The Work Thread:

The message from the district is, "It's less serious than just a cold now."

Are they living on another planet? One where there AREN'T 2000 people dying every day from it (in the US alone)?

(Yes, for those who are healthy and young and fully vaccinated it is thankfully usually on par with a cold, but THAT IS NOT EVERYONE. And also colds don't give you Long Covid.)

Rage.

@Arkandel said in Privacy in gaming:

Every conversation, personal or over a channel, is permanently logged.

One also has to consider the technology involved. We're so used to ancient MUSH tech with its live-telnet feed, but that's just not how virtually anything else works these days. WoW, forums, slack/discord, storium, Facebook messenger, gmail... they all store all conversations too. It's not because the admins are trying to (or even want to) snoop on everything, it's because that's what you need to do on a technical level to enable asynchronous communication. We should be careful not to subscribe suspicion or malice to a purely technical necessity. (Not that you were -- just making a general comment.)

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

Sounds good right?
Well. Maybe not.

For society, it absolutely is good. Micro-targeting ads and news articles is a horrific practice.

For individuals? Sure it's annoying, but that's what the "report as offensive" button is for.

@Ganymede said in Privacy in gaming:

I don't mean to pick at history, but that one problem player ran off a lot of folks, and some people apparently did not believe you would take meaningful action in response. I was completely unaware of what was happening; all I know is that the people I was playing with were quietly leaving. And I'm usually that one person that pipes up. What I've learned is that certain behavior must be addressed swiftly.

Absolutely. But which behavior?

Unsubstantiated rumours that Bob is driving off a players, but the players in question have gone and can't be reached for comment? Come on, that's not a bannable offense, that's gossip.

Accusations that Bob is harassing Suzy, but Suzy denies it? Really? You'd ban them for that?

Once I had a couple players come on record with specific complaints (about insensitive/inappropriate channel comments), the player received a stern warning to knock it off. To leave channels if they couldn't restrain themselves. When they didn't, they were banned. I personally don't think that should have been an instantly-bannable offense either, that a warning was appropriate, but I guess YMMV on that one.

If folks feel that makes me a bad staffer, that's their prerogative. I did my best to be fair and even in hindsight I don't feel that I did anything wrong.

But if even one of these alleged harassment victims had come forward with a specific allegation instead of just assuming I'd do nothing and bailing, things would have gone down very differently.

@silverfox The problem with that is that the social end is historically and rationally supposed to come AFTER the medical end. A disease doesn't cease to meet the scientific criteria for being a pandemic via wishful thinking. And when people try to pretend it does, it just leads to more unnecessary death (currently still topping 1k people PER DAY in the US alone - affecting certain groups disproportionately) AND prolongs the actual pandemic (by generating new and potentially deadlier variants).

It does feel, as @JinShei said, like living in the twilight zone.

@Ganymede said in Privacy in gaming:

But I'll go back to one of my previous posts regarding how I simply do not see anything productive with stern warnings.

That's fair. Personally I have had good success in the past. Often a player is used to stuff being tolerated elsewhere and just needs firm boundaries established. But different strokes and all that. I respect your perspective.

It's worth noting that in this case, I reviewed the channel comments that were reported and found them borderline. I've seen similar comments from other players laughed off without a thought. So for me it was worthy of a warning/probation but not an instant boot. It's a judgment call.

@Ganymede said in Privacy in gaming:

I think I was Suzy in this case, right? (I didn't have a problem with their behavior.)

No, you were someone allegedly run off by their behavior. Which of course wasn't actually true. (ETA: Actually no, that was someone else. But it still wasn't true.) All of which is why I think statements that it's easy to sort through this kind of thing are misguided.

Aaaanyway, steering back to the original topic. Sure, I could have saved myself a lot of drama by spying on this player and reviewing all their private logs and chats and everything. I probably would have picked up on the problems earlier. But I still think that's creepy and inappropriate. What's better is creating tools so players can report inappropriate behavior (which Ares now has), and cultivating a culture where players feel safe to do so.

@derp said in Health and Wealth and GrownUp Stuff:

You will miss that carpet soon. Carpet keeps the hair all trapped in easy to vacuum spots.

YMMV. We went from a house with carpet to a house with hardwood and the dog hair is way easier to manage on hardwood. Yeah it kinda whooshes around everywhere because it's loose, but that also makes it easier to see and vacuum up. Getting it out of the carpet with a regular sweeper was nigh impossible.

@Pandora said in Staff’s Job?:

If a game goes down, who do players look to? Staff. If there is a disruptive theme breach? Staff. If a plot conclusion needs a game-wide emit? Staff.

I just disagree, sorry.

You're not going to look to build staff if there's a disruptive theme breach, but these people are still staff. On some games, any storyteller can do a game-wide emit, yet not be staff. There just is no universal constant.

In any kind of 'authority' system you basically have three components: Title, Responsibilities, Permissions.

Often people that a game calls "staff" sign up for additional responsibilities (building/storytelling/app review/whatever), and in turn get more permissions (access to the jobs system/commands to build or code or schedule events/etc.) and a title: "Build/Plot/App Staff".

But that's not universal. On some games you have players who agree to additional responsibilities, or get additional permissions, but without the title of "staff". Faction heads, coders and builders are prime examples of this. Sometimes they're considered staff, sometimes not.

@Sunny said in The ADD/ADHD Thread (cont'd from Peeves):

She is brilliant and so, so good at explaining, holy crap.

We love her channel. SO well-presented and relatable.

https://howtoadhd.com/

@Derp said in How to Approach (nor not) a Suspected Creep:

Not to sit and hawk over everyone to make sure that whatever artificial boundary exists in my head is being honored by the entirety of everyone.

This. Everyone has different boundaries. We can't all be expected to guess whether someone is amused and/or enjoying the aggressive IC flirting or whether they're squicked out by it. If it's IC, then it's preferable to deal with it ICly. If there's an OOC problem, then the player needs to make that clear to the other players and/or staff.

@Rinel said in The ADD/ADHD Thread (cont'd from Peeves):

But now I'm more confused, lol. I rarely miss deadlines, but that's because I tend to cram at the very last minute. Maybe I have mild ADHD

That's actually pretty common. ADHD brains work well in crisis situations because they give us the jolt of neurotransmitters we need to focus properly. Also, we work better if we're interested in the task at hand.

And like @Auspice said - there are different variations. Besides just mild to severe, "Executive Functioning" covers a broad swath of skills, and folks with ADHD can have challenges in some but not others. (More details)

For instance - my kids and I are all time-blind, distractible, and prone to hyperfocus. We all interrupt each other and go off on rambly tangents during conversations. Man, watching the three of us trying to talk about something must be comical.

But we also have our own variations. Kid A is externally hyperactive. Kid B will be in tears (as Auspice described) if they need to do a homework assignment but can't force themselves get started on it. B procrastinates, A wants to do things NOW NOW NOW. They both have trouble breaking down a big task into its component steps, but I don't.

As a result, the coping strategies that I've developed (completely unknowingly, since I didn't realize I had it until my kids were diagnosed) don't always work for my kids, because their brand of ADHD is different than mine. And what works for one kid doesn't always work for the other.

TL;DR; ADHD is complicated. If you think you might have it, get a professional assessment and someone who can help you develop strategies for your specific brand of challenges.

P.S. Those are some cool churches.

@seraphim73 said in Sensitivity in gaming:

Like @faraday and others have said, in a war game you can expect violence, but that doesn’t mean there will be graphic descriptions of wounds or gore. If there are, probably a good thing to mention. Similarly, I don’t have a problem if there are spiders in a scene, but I don’t want detailed descriptions of them. If there’s a mention of a slaughtered village population, sure, but I don’t need descriptions of any of the details.

But what is your definition of "graphic descriptions of wounds or gore"? Everyone's going to be different there, which is why I think it's helpful to establish baseline expectations. Here's what I had on BSGU for instance:

This game can be thought of as having a TV-MA rating, intended for mature audiences. You must be over 18 to play here. RP may include crude indecent language, sexual situations, or graphic violence. The game, like the show, deals with heavy themes including genocide, war and various other traumas.

There was more to it about boundaries, but it's not relevant here. With that expectation, though, I think descriptions of slaughtered villages or limbs getting blown off is perfectly fair game without needing any particular content warning. It's right there on the tin.

If it's something that is commonly regarded as a potential trigger (rape, for instance) and outside the expectations of the game's theme/rating/boundaries, then yes, absolutely, slap a content warning on that thing. But beyond that? It's not fair to place responsibility for your own mental health on the entire game.

@insomniac7809 said in The ADD/ADHD Thread (cont'd from Peeves):

On the one hand (this is important) we are not healthcare professionals seeing you in person and it's a long-established truth that a layman or first-year student reading a medical textbook or the DSM will learn to their surprise that they have goddamn everything. We can't give a diagnosis.

Definitely good advice.

I do think that self-diagnosis (or "self-assessment" is a better term) has its place when you approach things from a perspective of struggles and strategies.

If you struggle with the same things that ADHD brains struggle with, the strategies that help ADHD brains may help you too, even if your struggles are actually caused by something other than ADHD. In many cases, the label is less important than finding tools that help you.

Dr. Google is no substitute for professional care, of course, but not everybody has the luxury of the time/finances/access/etc. necessary to get it.

@sunny notifications vary based on your browser, operating system, preferences, and whether the game has set up HTTPS. But FWIW I find even the best browser notification far inferior to the MU client blink. The same is true for slack and discord for me as well.