Best posts made by faraday

@surreality said in MSB: The meta-discussion:

@Gingerlily I used to be a mod on the big abortiondebate forum on livejournal. I have seen some shit. <rubs salve on all the scars> So I know precisely what you're saying about it just kinda being how people are on the internets.

Just because it's how people are on 90% of the internet forums out there doesn't mean that's how it should be or how it has to be. It all comes down to what community standards you choose to have and whether you're willing to enforce them.

I think adults should be capable of reining themselves in and providing criticism while still recognizing that the person whose game/system/show/opinion you're bashing is still a person who deserves to be treated with basic respect. It's the difference between saying "I don't like Battlestar games because X, Y Z" instead of "Man, Battlestar games suck. Why would anyone in their right mind want to play that crap?" (I love BSG, for the record.)

It's really not that hard, it just takes effort.

I would never wish to inflict genuine emotional pain on someone from a MU* plot. It is, after all, just a game. But at the same time, these are usally games with serious dramatic themes. Should nobody ever be allowed to kill off their character because it might cause someone to re-live the trauma of losing their BFF? Should no child ever be harmed in the story because it might upset me, a parent? Should nobody ever RP war trauma because it might upset a veteran? The list goes on and on and you can't reasonably be expected to label a plotline with every possible thing that might upset someone. If a game is generally labeled as including "mature themes" then I think the onus is on the player to communicate things that they don't wish to be involved in.

@hobos said in The ethics of IC romance, TS, etc:

IC romance does not equal TS at all.

This. My favorite IC romance started off with a random page that went something like: "So I don't do TS but I think it would be hilarious if our chars hooked up for a drunken one night stand and then regretted it." The other player also thought that would be hilarious. We had so much fun with it that the chars awkward-ed their way into dating. They eventually got married and dealt with a whole host of issues from infidelity to infertility. All without a bit of OOC drama or TS.

I wish that were the rule rather than the exception.

@lotherio said in Alternative Formats to MU:

I honestly want to know, what are 'we' doing better that will lure the numerous on-line RP'ers from those places to MU. And inversely, what is it we're gaining by taking the limited number of MU'ers and trying to get them into a new environments? I think that's a design 101 idea, purpose to provide direction?

I, personally, am not trying to lure the masses to MU. What I would like, however, is to see the medium I love continue beyond another generation. I mean people can naysay all they want about how MUSHes aren't dying, but I just flat-out don't believe them.

We've limped along so far in large part because most of the community grew up with crappy computer tech. But then I look at my kids. The touchscreen generation. The mobile generation. The generation that has never seen a command-line tool in their entire life. Expecting them to download a special desktop client and learn +bbpost <title>=<message> strikes me as something approaching insanity.

Not to mention the countless times I've been approached by people wanting to make a game who can't because of the ancient technology we're stuck with. You can create an entire freaking website with a few clicks, but a text-based game requires a system administrator and programmer with significant chops. It's just silly.

So that's my direction. Enable more games to be built. Don't turn off potential new players with ancient interfaces.

There are a lot of good ideas here, but I think maybe folks are missing the core of the issue:

This is a game, and for many, failure just isn't fun.

On BSGU for example, there were no special IC positions, no death without consent, multiple open public combat scenes each week, a flat XP system - in short, no meaningful IC or OOC consequences from failing.

And yet, the overwhelming majority of players still didn't want to fail because that's not the experience they're here for.

Of course you could probably bribe them hard enough or force them - but why? Who cares? If I'm there to play the Big Damn Hero, maybe just... let me?

Now personally I think failing sometimes can be fun. It creates drama. It gives you more interesting things to RP about. But not everybody sees it that way and that's OK by me.

Tangentially - I don't think folks have talked a lot about the OOC stigma of failure. My char on BSP was always screwing up. It's been over a decade so I don't remember specific comments, but I definitely recall getting a disapproving vibe off players sometimes. Like I was somehow stupid just because my character was doing stupid things. That can make it hard to embrace failure even when you have a positive mindset about it.

@Ganymede said in How to Escape the OOC Game:

My concern as a lawyercatbot and a Scion of All Wisdom is that the very few reprehensible people can do considerably more damage to one or many people than professional victims. In my experience, professional victims sow discord and chaos, but do not stalk or threaten others. Comparing them to the people Surreality and Sunny have had to deal with? I'd gladly take 100 professional victims over 1 creepy stalker.

Agreed. "If it's that bad, leave" is certainly the final solution for your own well-being, but it shouldn't have to be the first or only solution. Nobody wants the good people to run away while the bad actors remain unchecked.

@Ganymede said in How to Escape the OOC Game:

If you feel threatened or stalked on this board, please bring it to our attention immediately... I promise you -- we will take that shit very, very seriously.

I feel the same about players on any game I run. Folks deserve to play in peace. Just please come to me directly. Whisper-down-the-lane blame games are awkward. Ares has tools to help you report harassment.

@Derp said in How to Escape the OOC Game:

Someone else said that they think emotional distance is one of the problems with the hobby. I concur with the thought, but not the conclusion. You need emotional distance. You need to not be so invested in this stuff that a setback or a loss is an emotional devastation.

I agree with you that too many MU players get waaaaaay too invested in their characters and things that happen on games. But that wasn't the kind of emotional distance I was talking about. I am just encouraging basic human empathy. Treating other players with dignity and respect and not just as avatars or adversaries. I believe that this behavior is fostered when you acknowledge the players as much as you focus on the characters.

I compete in martial arts tournaments. In the ring, of course, you're doing your best to win. But as soon as the match is over, you shake hands, thank each other, and go back to being -- if not friends, at least respected competitors. Often we chit-chat in-between matches about shared interests or random pop culture.

This type of basic respect and good sportsmanship doesn't indicate a lack of detachment. Quite the opposite, it illustrates an acknowledgement that we're humans first, and that it's just a game.

(And nothing I'm saying requires you to tell your whole life's story or RL info. I know next to nothing about Gany's personal details beyond their profession, but we can still chat about Robotech and Mass Effect and maintain a connection across MUSHes.)

@arkandel said in Alternative Formats to MU:

Sure, but I don't see how that's what I argued.

Sorry I apparently misunderstood what you meant by providing technical capabilities.

@alzie said in Alternative Formats to MU:

It's an easily solved design issue too.

Yes, for that extremely trivial example it's not so hard. But in general? No, it isn't easily solved. Things designed well for an immediate-feedback telnet-based text environment just fundamentally work differently than things designed well for an asynchronous web environment. Supporting both requires considerable complexity.

@ganymede said in How can we incentivize IC failure?:

But the overarching issue is how to convince players that failure is not only possible, but possibly rewarding in its own right.

I think an even more arching issue is whether failure is really a goal to strive for in the first place. What is the problem that we're trying to solve here?

Imagine trying to apply that logic to any other kind of game: "OK, baseball/Fortnite/chess/Skyrim players, we need you to try to figure out how to lose more."

You'd get odd looks, right?

I'll throw out a tangential proposition that we don't actually want people to "lose more"; we just want them to not pout if things don't go their way. To not hog the spotlight out of some constant need to be the center of attention. To not throw a tantrum if somebody else gets something they wanted.

In short, we want players who show good sportsmanship. I don't think bribing them for tanking +rolls is the way to accomplish that goal.

I think @Arkandel should fork this whole thread off since it has nothing whatsoever to do with Gray Harbor.

But as long as we're off the rails...

@Lotherio said in Gray Harbor Discussion:

What if someone wanted to do a western ranchers Sheep Wars/Cattlemen/homesteader conflict theme/game But everyone was literally apping in ex 10th Cavalry members to be experts in Native Relations?

You see this in western MUs all the time, to a point. Everybody wants to play something that would have been a minority in that location/time period, be it a Calamity Jane gunfighter, or a freed slave who became a doctor, or a rich dilettante on the run, or a Chinese business owner, or a female Pinkerton detective, or a Buffalo soldier, or an openly LGBTQ person, or whatever. Taken individually, each of these concepts did in fact exist somewhere in the west. But when you put all of them in one cattle town, it really doesn't bear much resemblance to historical fiction any more.

Some might say "who cares? it's a game" and some might say "wtf I thought this was supposed to be a historical game". I seriously do not think that the latter group of folks is being bigoted. I'm a pretty ardent feminist myself, but even I could accept that female infantrymen were not historical in TGG's WWI campaign and that my boundary-pushing female cattlewoman was going to face historically-appropriate prejudice in the 1840's Australian outback on Pioneer. If folks don't want to deal with that, cool, but do say that anybody who wants to explore those historical settings is bigoted? I respectfully disagree.

Double post since I just stumbled across this on EW tonight and it seemed relevant to the discussion:

The Wachowskis were offered a bigger budget to make Bound a heterosexual love story

Tilly recalled that there was an offer on the table to make the film with a bigger budget — with the stipulation that the Wachowskis rewrite the script and make Gershon’s character a man.

@Ghost said in Fandom and entitlement:

I wanna read up on this stuff, because there's rarely a smoking gun, but I'd like to hear better accounts.

I don't think the problem in Hollywood is as overt as "We hate <POC/women/LGBTQ/etc.>", so there's probably not a "smoking gun" in that sense. The problem is always masked in excuses like: "But that story won't appeal to as wide of an audience" or "But we need a 'bankable star' to lead this" or "But girls don't buy as many toys" or whatever. There are tons of examples in interviews/articles/etc. of that kind of thing happening, though, so in a sense there actually are a lot of smoking guns lying around.

@WTFE Since you so clearly think so little of my chosen profession, industry, and the apparently-nonsensical design choices for my MU* server, I'd say there's not really much more to be gained from further discussion. Hope you find a game server that meets your needs.

@tempest I think an entire industry of movie and game trailers runs contrary to the idea that there is a finite amount of excitement for A Thing that will run out if you talk about A Thing before it's ready.

That said, I do agree that it's better to just build a game you want to play (and ask a few trusted friends if you want to know if they're interested too). Just because people are (or are not) interested in something now - that doesn't necessarily mean they will be in six months if/when you actually finish it. And MSB represents only a subset of the overall MUSHing population. It's also liable to bring out the "But you should do it this way!" crowd, leading to the danger of trying to design a game by committee. You can never please everyone, and it's very easy to become discouraged.

For me it comes down to this: Players are (probably inadvertently) ruining the fun of other players simply by playing their characters a certain way ICly.

I have seen nothing in this thread to indicate that the way those folks are playing is either out of theme (hello, delinquent teenage criminals), or OOCly abusive (again, with the exception of the kill-you-in-your-sleep dude who left).

So it comes down to the age-old entitlement/compromise argument that crops up on these boards every other Tuesday. To what extent is Player1 expected to cater their RP to make Player2 happy? If they feel their character really truly is that way, how much should they be asked to bend just to keep the peace?

To put a different spin on it ... it's no different from someone coming here and complaining about the opposite problem. Like, they try to do something exciting / conflict driven but everybody else on the game just wants to do endless tea parties and TS in private rooms. It's a legitimate complaint in terms of why you don't like the game, but I think attacking the players for doing it, or attacking staff for letting it happen is inappropriate. It's a matter of style and taste and what you want out of the game.

@Ganymede said in What MU/RPG opinions have you changed or maintained?:

Unsurprisingly, I enjoy playing both bridge and poker.

There's nothing wrong either game, and certainly nothing wrong with liking both.

What happens too often in MUSH land, though, is that you have people who are:

a) Showing up to a bridge tournament expecting to play poker and then getting disappointed.
b) Trying to play both bridge and poker simultaneously with the same deck of cards and acting shocked when that doesn't work out.
c) Badmouthing those who prefer a different type of card game than they do.
or some variation of the above.

MUSH games are not very good about setting expectations of what kind of game they are, and players are not very good about respecting those boundaries even when they are established.

@Sparks said in Accounting for gender imbalances:

Now maybe it genuinely is just an idle philosophical exercise to some people to shift discussion of "how" to "if" instead. But to a lot of us in the STEM fields? It is part of our daily professional life in some way or another, not just some abstract thought exercise.

I'll start by saying that I don't believe that @Ghost's comment "if you take a female candidate who isn't as skilled..." was intended with any malice. That said, everything Sparks said is accurate. This is a daily grind. It sucks. It's exhausting. And "Just hire the best person for the job" is one of those arguments that is quite frequently trotted out to trivialize the very real struggles that women/POC/LGBTQ candidates face in tech.

Here's a concrete example that has nothing and everything to do with gender. It's quite trendy for software companies these days to expect candidates to do all kinds of extracurricular activities. Conferences. Open source projects. Community engagement. Or they'll make doing some kind of coding project--requiring hours of work--part of the interview process. Sounds great on paper, right? Anybody who's doing all that crap outside of work must be super devoted.

But you know who doesn't have time for that kind of stuff? People with families. Especially women. Also other minority candidates who may face additional social challenges that divert their attention outside of work.

Does that make them any worse at doing their job? Only if the core facet of the job is "your ability to work on your job outside of working hours", which is a pretty crappy reason to hire somebody.

There's plenty of research to support the idea that having a more diverse workforce is valuable, so this should be something we strive to change. But unless we challenge our preconceived notions about what constitutes a good candidate and recognize the inherent biases in the hiring processes and culture in tech, we're never going to make progress.

@arkandel said in Managing Player Expectations:

What I'd be curious to know though is what some of such players' expectations are to begin with.

@lotherio said in Managing Player Expectations:

I was kicked in the teeth for doing it and not having enough stuff for evening folks (and really, what the hell, why can't I run a day-centric game, every other game is evening-centric).

Replying to both of these together just to point out that I think, on the whole, players don't take enough responsibility for managing their own expectations.

Like, say you're an evening EST player and you're bummed that @lotherio is running mostly daytime plots. Or you're playing on a zombie game and are disappointed that staff doesn't want you to save the world by designing a zombie cure. Or you're on BSGU and are disappointed that your unit is focused on killing Cylons instead of researching how to hack them.

Players need to be more willing to realize that a game just isn't for them. All too often, they'll instead choose to stick around and whine endlessly about how the game isn't meeting their needs. That sort of attitude is toxic and discouraging. We need to get away from this idea that all games need to be everything for everyone. First off, it's impossible, but secondly, when it inevitably fails, all it does is discourage new game development.

What makes MUSHing unique to me is mostly cultural, not code-related.

The biggest thing is that MUs are dynamic. The game is always turning, at some ratio compared to RL. Scenes happen in hours (usually) or days (worst-case), not weeks. Stuff happens. Stuff changes. You can tell your own stories; you're not locked into a GM-fed narrative. This leads to a depth of character development I haven't seen elsewhere. You can impact the story in ways that I haven't seen elsewhere. Games don't stall because one player gets busy or drops out, which is a big problem elsewhere.

There are some other aspects too that make MUs different - the openness (lack of a fixed group), the paragraph length (hitting a narrative sweet spot between short emotes and wall-of-text), OOC community (channels, logs, etc.), TTRPG influence (sheets/rolls), code support (combat/clues/whatever.)

As for how to get young people involved? For me personally, that's what Ares is all about. I've shown it to my kids and they just 'get' it. I've tried to show MUSHes to people before and I get blank stares. I understand that people like the grid and the immersion of walking to a room and just running into somebody there. But it's just not a very approachable mental model for people outside the hobby. The 'scene' model is, because it mirrors every other medium of writing/television/etc. (Ares has a grid, btw, but that's mostly to appease the veterans who see that as a defining part of MUs. I don't think it's a selling point; quite the contrary.)

@Rinel Not every medicine has the same effect on everyone, so medication alone isn't going to prove or disprove anything. But that feeling of "but what if it's not ADHD and it's just me..." is SUPER common among folks going through the diagnostic process as adults. Years of negative feedback takes a toll.

It's also not uncommon for folks to first experience the effects in high school and college. The further you go through education, the less regimented things become and the more you have to manage your own work. That's when the executive functioning challenges of ADHD really kick in. So really, you're not alone.

For me, the primary reasons for CG review are to:

• Protect existing players from disruptive influences - like people who seriously don't understand the theme or are making characters who just don't fit.
• Minimize issues with theme and/or system misunderstandings.

There are those who'd argue that the former can be handled on-grid, but by the time you identify the problem, damage has already been done. Dozens of players may be impacted and retcon may be needed. That's just awful. I think staff owes it to players to do a better job of preventing those headaches.

The second bullet is what I see the most issues with - even in a system as simple as FS3. "Why does your schoolteacher have Demolitions?" "Did you really mean to take Violin at virtuoso levels for your marine?" "You can't make it to Major with only 2 years of service." ... stuff like that. It's usually just a minor misunderstanding of the theme/system or something they forgot to mention in their background, but shaking that stuff out in advance saves RP issues down the road.

So while I respect that some players don't like to write backgrounds or flesh out their characters in advance, I view it as a necessary evil for keeping a game running smoothly.

But not everything needs to be carved in stone either. If three weeks in, somebody says: "Hey can I switch my hobby from basketweaving to chess?" then as long as they haven't done a lot of basketweaving scenes, I'll switch the points around. Similarly, you don't need to detail every year of their lives; there can be room for adding more information later, connections to other players, etc. Just don't try claiming post-chargen that oh-by-the-way you're also a millionaire and won the medal of honor.

@Ghost said in Getting Young Blood Into MU*'ing:

IMO the only people who should have MU suggested to are people who are (ex.) "looking to primarily do writing online".

I think it's pretty honest to say that Mushing is not a place where youre going to get the tabletop RPG experience.

I agree that it’s not a TTRPG experience, but it’s not a creative writing experience either. It has elements of both and elements of neither, which is what makes it a niche hobby to begin with.