Best posts made by faraday

@ThatGuyThere Really? Being expected to stay within the confines of the defined theme/grid is considered "railroading" these days? @GirlCalledBlu is being far more generous than I would be in this situation if players decided to go off and do their own thing.

Staff is well within their rights to define the bounds of the game. It's like... I'm doing a Star Wars game set on Tattooine and you want to play on Hoth. Or I'm doing a Wild West game set in Tombstone and you want to go off to Deadwood. My answer would range from "No" to "Good luck, here's a TP Room - you're on your own".

@Tempest said in Accounting for gender imbalances:

What in the world does being a minority have to do with how much time you have to devote to things? If you as a person have 20 different responsibilities outside of work, that are going to render you incapable of doing what your employer expects of you, that sounds like a personal problem that, again, has literally nothing to do with sex or race or any of that.

I said nothing about their ability to work. I was talking about things outside of work.

There are studies/articles on this very subject. You can go read them if you like. My point is that responsibilities outside of work should have nothing to do with your qualifications for work. If you can do your job, that's all that should matter. But in reality that's not all that matters. Employers bias towards people based on perceptions about their commitment or their ability to do things outside of work, and that causes a bias in hiring against certain demographics.

@collective said in How should IC discrimination be handled?:

But by limiting the discussion to historical games, it is a lot easier to say 'Well, that's just unreasonable to even ask' when people ask why the slurs and discrimination are setting vital.

I am not saying you are trying to do that on purpose, but I am saying that in narrowing the scope back down in conjunction with your reservations about allowing players to opt out from bigotry, you are basically bolstering your point at the expense of ignoring a large part of the ongoing conversation.

Actually I never narrowed the scope. I asked a question about a historical example and you somehow took that to mean I was only concerned with historical settings. I never said that. @Arkandel even gave examples of how those exact same situations can come up in modern settings too. I also never said that slurs and discrimination were vital to historical settings. In fact I said the opposite.

So for the fourth time (as you said - thank goodness this isn't a drinking game) ... I am simply soliciting ideas for how folks (this is a general query) suggest implementing this "opt out" policy idea in actual practice.

This goes beyond something as trivial as "hey can we not use the n-word/f-word" "oh sure". I'm always in favor of folks being nice and working things out, but I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about situations where they can't agree because the impacts are subtle or more deeply ingrained in a character's behavior than simple word choice.

This is independent of setting. Take BSG for instance - Capricans hate Taurons. Joe's character is Caprican but he really doesn't like even fictional -isms and doesn't want to engage with that aspect of the theme. That's all well and good until...

Joe's chilling at the bar when a (different) Caprican and a Tauron get into it and flinging insults at each other, careening toward a barfight.

Joe's a doctor and there's a Tauron patient who doesn't want anything to do with being treated by a Caprican.

Joe's supervisor is a Tauron and really has it in for him because of his heritage.

How do you resolve situations like this if opt-out from discrimination is a policy?

It's not a criticism. It's a question.

@Bobotron said in Star Wars: Insurgency:

Super applause for confining the focus of the game to one planet.

As someone who spent most of my Star Wars RP looking at the WHO list and all the people on planets other than mine, +1 in agreement.

@Ghost Bummer for your mom I have no experience with replacement surgery specifically (IANADoctor), but from what I know of other medical procedures, they generally don't perform tests for allergies ahead of time. I found a few studies like this one saying that routine pre-testing is not indicated in implant surgery since the number of complications is so low and false-positives from skin tests are common (i.e. someone gets a rash from nickel jewelry but does just fine with a nickel-whatever-alloy replacement knee.) Still really sucks when it happens though.

@ganymede said in How should IC discrimination be handled?:

I may be misreading things, but I think you've got the gist of the policy.

I can understand the policy as it applies to 'if someone asks you not to type a slur on screen, please respect that'. Where I'm hazy on is how you opt-out of the more subtle stuff, like the examples I described.

@collective said in How should IC discrimination be handled?:

@faraday Show me a real life BSG minority and I'll worry about the question.

Look I was trying to use a fictional example to avoid offending anyone but I really do think you're smart enough to insert (oppressive RL group A) for Caprican and (oppressed RL group B) for Tauron and realize that the question goes beyond pretendy made up minorities.

Just a slight clarification: There's a plot afoot and after this weekend the PCs will be transferred to a smaller ship in Galactica's taskforce and not Galactica itself. The updated summary blurb is:

The MUSH follows the adventures of the Timber Wolves, a special operations unit in the nascent Colonial Forces. This small band tackles the toughest missions across all Twelve Colonies, putting aside old rivalries and prejudices as they band together against a common enemy.

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

I think... 2 don't apply to me.
That 'being so bored it hurts' also hits home. Man, the times I've legitimately gotten angry because I can't find or settle on anything to do.

Ditto on both counts.

Some of the ones that were entirely too spot-on for me:

Constantly late even when I have plenty of time... Oh man yes. Don't expect my +events to actually start on time. Sorry. I do my best.

Cleaning the whole house or nothing at all... I call it "cleaning frenzy".

Having a hard time switching what you're doing... I'm like a parent arguing with a young child inside my own head. "It's time to stop now." "But I just need to finish this one thing." "Does NOW mean something else in your language?" "I'm almost done!"

@bored Yeah it's potentially arguably "less outright offensive" but that still doesn't make it "good". Which is why I don't think this idea is limited just to modern settings / RL discrimination at all.

@DownWithOPP said in BSG: Unification:

@ThatGuyThere FS3.

Yeah. It's the new edition of FS3 though, which improves various things.

@Wretched So true. So very very true. I can't do podcasts either. Or anything where I'm expected to learn simply by listening.

@collective said in How should IC discrimination be handled?:

That's literally it. All umpteen billion posts I've made in this thread saying exactly and only that.
And I still haven't seen anybody answer why the 'right' to pursue that RP unfettered is more important that somebody else's fun.

OK I seriously don't know what I did to piss you off, but if you could tone it down for two seconds you might realize that I am on your philosophical side here. I am not attacking you. I am not saying you're wrong for wanting an environment where you don't have to face the same crap you do in RL. I am asking genuine questions about potentially sticky implementations of a policy you suggested, and you're alternately jumping down my throat or being extremely dismissive. Geez.

What you described sounds an awful lot like the FTB policy - written or unwritten -
that's been present on every game I've played in the last ten years. I seriously have never seen a situation - any situation - where somebody was forced to endure RP they found unpleasant. Endure the consequences? Sure. But not the scene itself. If all you're asking for is the ability to FTB out of abuse, then I don't see the controversy, at all. But it has not been clear to me that that's what you were asking for.

I see 'opt-out' and my mind goes to consent-based games where you could nope out of being robbed, or beaten up, or killed, or having your house burned down, or any other consequence you didn't like. That is very different from FTB, and I and others have provided various examples of where that could be problematic to implement.

I can opt out of an assault just by saying "I got away somehow." I can opt out of dying by saying "The bullet hit a book in my pocket" or whatever. Yeah, it might stop you from "winning" but it doesn't force you to act in ways contrary to your character's belief system. Opting out of discrimination in its entirety might lead to things like "your bigot must hire my (group he hates) character" or "your sexist must treat my female character as an equal".

As for the fictional minorities? Nobody is trying to drag you onto the "Freedom for Taurons" bandwagon here. That's absurd. But it is equally absurd to dismiss the potentially-hurtful implications of the "Space British" heaping crap onto the "Space Irish" under a paper-thin veil of changing the names (to "Hibernians", because that makes it so much better). Is it as bad as seeing racial slurs hurled at fictional people like yourself? No. But that doesn't make it fun for everyone either.

Could we pretty please take the discussion of FS3 combat mechanics and realism and whatnot over to the FS3 thread?

@surreality It's still ODD in everything I've read recently.

@ganymede said in How should IC discrimination be handled?:

@collective said in How should IC discrimination be handled?:

I'm not sure why somebody would want to make themselves unhappy in real life for the sake of RP verisimilitude.

I don't know why either, but I'm pretty sure this happens very rarely. I'd like to think gamers are smarter than this.

I'm not sure why they'd expect others to do that, either.

I think this is what most of us are dancing around.

Really? I would say people do that all the time. True consent games are a rarity these days, so virtually every game requires you to suspend consent to some degree or another and RP things that might make their players unhappy. I think that’s the fundamental point of contention here.

And just to reiterate - I have no issue with people FTB-ing anything that makes them uncomfortable. I have no issue with games removing -isms across the board for everyone. I’m less comfortable with the idea of allowing folks to opt out of consequences entirely, because it doesn’t quite seem fair to let some people have Plot Armor against certain aspects of the theme but not others just because of their players’ respective comfort levels.

@meg said in Mustard MUSH List:

But linking someone else's hard work in your menus comes off a lot like presenting it as part of your site, part of your work.

Ah, I understand. To me it's clear that it's going to an external site so I don't see it as any sort of claim, just a quick reference. But I get where you're coming from.

@Wretched Your contacts can fall OUT or get kind of folded up in the corner of your eye or under your eyelid, but they can’t get behind your eye. The folding thing would happen to me every once in a while. Annoying but not in any way dangerous.

Sorry for the double-post but one other thought about ratings... Some of it comes down to the theme as well as the rating.

Period sexism in PG-13 Wonder Woman wasn't surprising or upsetting because it was a respectful and important part of the story. But if Hawkeye were to start spouting random homophobic nonsense in a PG-13 Avengers movie, that would be pretty WTF, right?

Supernatural isn't really my jam, but it looks really nice. The idea of werewolves and vampires revealing themselves on social media is hilariously imaginable.

This is super interesting. I never really knew aphantasia was a thing.

I have a friend who has these interesting sci-fi story-ish dreams, and he'll describe them to me in ridiculous detail. Like down to the color of the curtains in the room or the way the sunlight glints off of the steel doorknobs or whatever.

Meanwhile if you asked me to describe my kitchen, like @Ninjakitten says, I could do so in fact-based terms... the cabinets are brown, the sink is right by the back door, the stove is gas with five burners... but I don't really see a vivid image in my mind. It's more like fuzzy still pictures at best.

I think this is partly why I find MU descs so useless and love PBs. You can give me this elaborate evocative desc of a room or person, and all I'm gonna get out if it is, like... "ok there's a table in the corner and that guy is tall with brown hair". I can't picture it without an existing reference.