Posts made by faraday

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

There is no question handling these themes carefully is necessary

In truth, though, there are many themes that have the potential to upset or offend someone. IC -ism and sexual assault are the two we point to all the time, but that's by no means an exhaustive list. Someone who had to deal with a loved one with a particular mental illness may be sensitive to depictions of that (e.g. suicide but that's not the only example). Someone who lost a child may be horribly upset seeing a plotline where children were harmed. First responders and soldiers may be triggered by all kinds of things. And although it makes me feel icky to agree with the troll in any fashion, betrayal can be a sensitive subject too for someone who's gone through that sort of thing iRL. I've seen people leave games over it.

Games should set expectations. Players should ask questions if they're concerned about how a particular theme would be handled. We should come up with tools to help people resolve difficulties. These are all good things worth discussing, for sure. But that doesn't necessarily mean we should treat this particular sensitive situation any different than any other.

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

I'm sure I've seen some variation on that notice in games before, so the answer is 'Yes' in some cases.

Sweetwater had that notice (in the wiki policy file on "Historical Accuracy" though not on the dang connect screen, which strikes me as ludicrous). BSGU warns generally of TV-MA level themes including "heavy themes including genocide, war and various other traumas" so I think that IC discrimination is pretty well covered. But apparently those warnings aren't good enough for some people.

And honestly, despite those warnings, they've been happy, cooperative games 99.9% of the time. I actually got 10x more complaints on Sweetwater about it not being realistic enough by having so many unconventional characters than I ever had problems with people harassing each other ICly. But yes, there was that one time where somebody forced an issue and it turned unpleasant.

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

It would be much more productive to talk about "what are the most effective ways/tools we can use to help people navigate when there are thematic issues that hit too close to home for them OOCly and help people to play in a collaborative manner that's fun for everyone." Which is not the conversation you're having. Your conversation seems to be "there is no reason why anyone should want to engage in these themes on a game."

Yes. Can we please get back to this? Because the other debate is going nowhere.

We have FTB as a tool.

We have player cooperation as a tool ("Hey I know your char hates Virgons but can we find a way to work together because I'd like to play with you and not eat crap all the time" "Sure that sounds cool").

Folks have talked about opt-out as a tool, which can work sometimes ("I'm just gonna skip the big debate about women voting rights because I know that's going to be miserable") but I still have yet to hear a good explanation of how you deal with a situation where racism and sexism are a thing and you've got an African American woman trying to be a deputy. Like, seriously... how do you opt out of that?

What other tools are there?

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

Okay, so why is bigotry different in that a player should have to put up with it on a non-consensual basis? If your character can't get sick without consent, or can't have their IC house burn down without consent, what makes it okay for the players of those characters to have to sit through abusive language and situations based on race, orientation, etc?

I didn't say anything about consensual. I was talking expressly on "Random Crap Heaped Upon You From On High By Staff" when you were implying that people should just randomly get typhoid.

Once you get other players into the mix, it comes down to the game's consent policy. Some games are more consent-y than others.

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

But if you're not going to do that, singling out players for a fun tax on their play in the name of realism isn't realistic. Or rather, it's applying your 'realism' in such a way that you are making a statement about who is or isn't welcome on your game, even if you don't mean to make it.

I have great sympathy for the types of discrimination you've endured. I can understand not wanting to play on certain themes, just like I would have zero fun in playing on a game where unconventional women were subjected to heaping piles of abuse.

The only difference is that I wouldn't attribute any malice to somebody running a period historical game and saying "Yo, we don't want 27 Calamity Janes running around because it breaks our immersion". That's their right to go for a more grounded setting, and it's my right to say "Okay bye". (Maybe you're not attributing malice either but it kinda sounds like you are so maybe there's a miscommunication again.)

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

Hey, if everybody is going to be equally miserable, sure. So put in that random disease dropper that tells a random character every so often that their character is dying of typhoid or tuberculosis or syphilis. Bring on the weather effects that knock down a player's IC business or farm, completely at random.

That seems kind of extreme. Just because I, as staff, wouldn't inflict Random Typhoid or Random Fires or Random Murder or Random Racism on somebody doesn't mean that typhoid and fires and murder and racism don't exist in the theme. It doesn't stop someone from doing a plot where their character gets sick, or tries to burn down someone else's business in revenge, or tries to murder someone else. All of these things have happened.

They are less likely to happen, though, if you set up your game's theme to foster cooperation instead of PvP. But even on a co-op game you can end up with a clash of fictional ideals.

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

That doesn't mean I won't, or that it can't be a problem. I'm engaging in this discussion because I'm interested in figuring out whether there can be a sort of acceptable, pre-emptive policy that goes beyond the usual standard of: "knock it off with that shit if someone complains about it."

I am interested in whether such a solution exists as well. I'm not sure what you mean by a straight-up warning for historical settings though. Warning about what?

@Collective @Ganymede

Honest question since I think something may be getting lost in translation here.

I haven't seen anybody dispute the idea that raging slur-spouting bigots shouldn't be allowed as PCs because they're disruptive. Just like serial killers or unhinged sociopaths probably shouldn't either.

So if that's the consensus, and modern/sci-fi themes don't generally have the historical baggage of dumb laws that have since been overturned (women can't own property, interracial marriages are illegal, etc.) ... what exactly are the problems you're seeing in WoD/modern settings?

And in historic settings, what do you suggest? Just handwaving completely and having nobody be allowed to bat an eye at a female gunslinger or an African American sheriff, even in eras where, say, iRL women weren't allowed to wear pants and slavery was still a thing?

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

I have to admit, I sure as hell wouldn't want to play on a game where the theme and setting made that kind of behavior appropriate, but I suppose that kind of game has some merit for some folks.

That's fair. And just to be clear - even on Sweetwater (a western) with its TV-MA rating, I personally would not have tolerated people randomly going around spouting slurs at other characters. Because as @Apos said, that crap is just disruptive no matter how thematic it may be. And as @Ganymede pointed out - you can get across prejudice without resorting to vulgarity if it is indeed important to the character or the story.

The problems I had with that setting weren't nitwits running around dropping n-words like f-bombs. That just never happened even on a game where IC discrimination was allowed. The problems were more like what @Apos described, where modern sensibilities butted up against historical laws and expectations.

And yes, of course, you could just say "Yo, there's no law against <xyz> in this game even though there totally was iRL". You could put a tolerant sheriff in place who doesn't give a crap. You can just go full-on alt-history. But it's nonetheless a problem that will crop up and can easily lead to more subtle forms of IC nastiness.

@collective No, I was trying to say it was a combination of rating and theme.

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

I don't recall a lot of people, if any people, even the villains, calling Wonder Woman a whore, bitch, slut, etc, in that movie. And yet the period sexism was portrayed quite nicely.

Exactly. Because it was PG-13 rating and a comic book movie theme. If it were an R-rated movie with more of a historical bent, would you have been surprised if that stuff had been turned up?

To use another movie example: Magnificent Seven (PG-13) versus Django Unchained (R). Both have extremely different 'takes' on period -isms.

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?

@collective You seem to be selectively reading the thread if you think everyone has decided it's a non-issue.

But to answer your question, I think all games should spell out general expectations, but I don't see a need to call out IC discrimination explicitly. I am happy with what my game policy says.

Many games use a rating system and I think that should suffice when common sense is applied. If I went to a R-rated western movie, I would not be surprised by potentially-upsetting depictions of slavery. If I went to a R-rated modern war-in-the-desert movie, I would not be surprised by potentially-upsetting depictions of Islamophobia. Now if I went to a PG-rated family drama and saw people casually slinging around n-words, I'd be understandably upset.

But no, I don't see the need for a disclaimer saying essentially "People will be people, good and bad, as long as it's kept IC."

That doesn't mean I support any of these things in RL. Far from it. -isms and -obias are horrible things. But so is murder. So is war. So are many forms of injustice. I don't expect my fiction - or my games - to present a utopian view of the world.

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

Nobody is going to take that as the heartfelt view of a player leaking into the in character world. I hope.

I've seen it happen even in fictional worlds. Especially if the IC discrimination is just an allegory for RL discrimination fo some sort, which it often is. (ETA: I mean I've seen people take it that way.)

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

One issue is the setting, and how much do you remove discrimination and awfulness from the setting at large. Do you allow women to openly serve in the local cavalry soldiers fort? Will a black character be elected sheriff without anyone batting an eye?

I think this is an important point. It's one thing to say "you can't play a flaming bigot". I'm not sure this is any different from limiting any other kind of disruptive character types, so I don't see the controversy there. I mean, you probably wouldn't want someone to play a serial killer on your game either right?

It's quite another to try to rewrite the setting to pretend that pervasive, systemic -ism doesn't exist and never existed. I mean, you can try, but unless it's Star Trek utopia it's going to be hard for people to wrap their heads around. I've seen numerous cases on BSG games where people just have a hard time accepting that "no, really, sexism and homophobia and racism just really aren't a thing here." It creeps into RP in subtle ways.

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

These things aren't an on-off switch, people can be kinda racist, and kinda sexist, and kinda homophobic, etc. Most people are.

Yeah. And I think it's easy to deal with the extremes. Someone who's running around hurling slurs left and right for the fun of it is clearly a detriment to the game. Someone who's dealing with these themes in a respectful way can lead to rich stories, even if those stories are not everyone's cup of tea.

But looking only at extremes can blind us to the problematic middle ground, where IC discrimination may not be raging a-holes harassing people, but can still have harmful effects on other characters. For example: somebody refusing to hire a woman in a sexist society or reporting an interracial romance to the authorities in a historical setting where such things were illegal. Yes, it's thematic. Yes, real world ugliness creeps into our games in many forms (murder, genocide, assault). But do we really need/want to go there?

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

And as I have yet to hear a solid reason as to why a player must engage in IC discrimination, and cannot find any situation where a player should engage in it.

OOC player-to-player discrimination is never excusable, but here are a couple of real IC examples.

A frontier game set in 1840's Australia. My female ranchhand was subject to IC discrimination by various PCs, including her reluctant boss, for being unconventional, 'loose' (their impression because she worked with the men), and a bad influence on 'proper' young ladies. The discrimination was entirely thematic and I had no problem with it. I would have actually been a bit bewildered if nobody had batted an eye at her, since her struggle against convention was what interested me most about the character.

Same frontier game (still 1840s, remember). My char's BFF came out to her, revealing she was a trans woman and oh-by-the-way was romantically interested in my char. Later that same char admitted she had married a man, in church, without revealing the truth about her identity. My char, a practicing Catholic, was more than a little "WTF" by all this. But although it started out with entirely-period rejection and damnation, it led to a really great character arc where my char came to realize that her BFF was still her BFF, and that these other unconventional people were really her only true friends and allies in town, and who the heck was she to throw stones.

BSG game. My char is Space Irish (using the paper-thin analogies for the sake of those unfamiliar with the setting), her father was jailed for being part of the Space IRA, and she's suffered a lifetime of abuse at the hands of the Space British. You can bet she's bigoted against Space British characters. She had a lot of issues dealing with her NPC Space British boss.

Now I'm a pretty empathetic person RL. I'm sure a lot of folks here are sick of my bleeding heart views about everyone getting along. But my characters are not me and IC is IC. If someone asks for a FTB, I will agree without question. If someone asks me to do (or not do) something because the RP is going in a direction they don't like, I'll do my best to work with them. But I'm not going to feel guilty for having my character react in thematically appropriate ways that are true to that character.

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

As an analogy, consider a Call of Duty multiplayer match. I'll accept getting shot to pieces by some 12-year-old kid, but I will log the fuck out in a second when he starts crowing about how he "raped" me or how girls shouldn't be gamers.

Of course. But that's OOC abuse. We were talking about IC behavior. Everyone has sensitive subjects they would prefer not to RP about. For me it's "kids in mortal peril". For someone else it might be assault, or suicide or losing a close relative, or - yes - IC discrimination/harassment. I think there's general agreement that nobody should be forced to sit at a keyboard and be subjected to things that upset them. I mean really - is there anyone here arguing against FTB? What's being debated is whether and how people should be allowed to avoid such parts of the theme entirely - and what impacts that has on other players.

@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.

@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.

@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.

@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.

@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.

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

One of these things is not like the other, can you tell which one it is?

I guess I missed the part of the discussion where asking about a historical example equated to limiting the conversation only to historical examples and "moving goalposts"? But thanks so much for clearing that up for me.