@macha said in The Work Thread:
I am not sure what a demand letter is, to be honest.
Basically just a letter from a lawyer reminding them that they have an obligation under ADA laws to provide reasonable accommodations and demanding that they do so. (My I-am-not-a-lawyer summary :))
It shows them that you're serious AND that you have legal representation, which is often enough to get them off their butts.
@ganymede said in The Desired Experience:
If staff does not intend to service a particular concept, then they shouldn’t allow that concept as a PC.
Why? If somebody understands that their concept isn't geared towards the central 'action' of the game and decides to play anyway, why stop them from having fun?
Someone had a lot of fun with a cook character on one of the BSG games, even though they never got involved in a single central plotline. To each their own.
@il-volpe said in The Desired Experience:
@faraday That's a matter of scale. The biggest thing the grunts can do is win battles, right? That matters in their world. So in BSG Abelard saves the team and makes the objective with minimal losses and Brigid does a good job wiping down the mess hall.
It's also a matter of perspective. There have certainly been people complaining about not being able to be a "mover and shaker" in various games.
One of the campaigns was WW1 trench warfare. It's hard to imagine much 'agency' when you're cannon fodder. One of my more memorable scenes from the game was a couple of medics cowering in the hold of a transport ship being attacked by a U-Boat, wondering if they were going to survive while there was literally nothing they could do. All players have agency over their characters' actions in any given situation; that's just the basic nature of RP. (I mean, short of mine control I guess.) That's different than having agency to affect the world in any meaningful way, and sometimes that's okay. Sometimes that's a selling point.
Agency in the sense of "doing stuff that matters in the world" isn't everything, either. Take TGG for instance. In most of the campaigns, the PCs were grunts. They couldn't impact the war. They couldn't choose their missions. The battle code could kill them at any moment. BSGU was in a similar vein, though not as hard-core.
People want different things. There's no one perfect recipe for a game to be successful.
@macha said in The Work Thread:
@faraday I already pointed out to my boss, I have three choices. Let them keep abusing me like this, find a new job, or sue the hell out of them.
I know YOU have, but sometimes it takes hearing it from an external person with more cred. (Not saying that’s right or anything, just how it is.). It can be an intermediate and less costly step than a lawsuit. They also may be able to advise you on how to prepare for a lawsuit should you choose to go that way.
@Macha Maybe see if there's a disability advocate who can help you? I dunno about where you live, but around here there are some non-profit organizations that offer pro-bono services. Sometimes an advocate can light a fire because they know the next step is lawsuit.
@arkandel said in New WoD digital toolset coming in 2022:
Let me put it this way. Ten years ago if you asked most people whether they'd rather own music or subscribe to a service they'd pick the former.
I don't think that's really an apples-to-apples comparison though.
A lot of the appeal of music subscription services is variety. Listen to something new every week. There's also stability. Nobody's worried about Apple Music going away any time soon.
Paying $60/year to rent game books that ideally I would be referencing for decades? Not at all appealing.
@arkandel I think that some of the details in the comments from Clooney and a similar interview from McConaughey show why there are concerns about leaving the safety checks up to actors with minimal experience.
"I mean every time I get handed a six-gun," or a gun that holds six cartridges, "you point it at the ground and you squeeze it six times," Clooney said, noting "It's just insane" not to.
You can't do that if the gun is loaded with blanks. You could shoot yourself in the foot with a blank (which may have been what happened in another Rust set incident).
"You hear 'cold' -- now I want a visual," said the Texan star. (McConaughey) "If you and I are in a scene together, I need to give you visual. If it's a six shooter, do you see light through all six holes?
You can't do that when a six-shooter is loaded with dummy rounds for the shot.
"I've never heard the term 'cold gun,'" Clooney said of his years of movie-making. "I've never heard that term. Literally. They're just talking about stuff I've never heard of. It's just infuriating."
Numerous armorers have spoken about the term "cold gun" and "hot gun" in recent interviews. Even McConaughey mentions the term in his interview.
They mean well, but this is just showing how their field of expertise is different from that of armorers, which is why the safety protocols are designed the way they are and why you don't want actors freelancing their own personal safety protocols.
@derp Yep.
On BSGU, I was very up front that the plots were going to revolve around the pilots and marines doing action stuff. While you could be some other kind of crewman, you were on your own for RP. Whenever someone apped a support crewman, I spoke with them individually to make sure they understood this. Some proceeded anyway, and I was like: "More power to them." They knew what they were getting into.
Most got bored and quit, as I expected. Two, though, took the initiative to figure out how to get their support people into the "dungeon". They worked with me to craft an appropriate storyline, generated a bunch of RP, and ended up being two of the more interesting characters on the game.
@jennkryst said in Movie / TV / Streaming Peeves or Whatever:
Much like a pilot checks their fuel levels after the ground crew tells them the plane has been fueled.
The pilot, yes, but not the flight attendant. Everyone has their own job in the pre-flight check.
Here are some more tales from actors and armorers of how things are done on sets that actually bother to follow the safety procedures:
“I don’t recall ever being handed a weapon that was not cleared in front of me — meaning chamber open, barrel shown to me, light flashed inside the barrel to make sure that it’s cleared,” (actor Jeffrey) Wright said. “Clearly, that was a mismanaged set.” (src)
“We open the cylinder and rotate through all six cylinders so you can clearly see that they are empty and that there is no brass inside there,” (pro armorer) Van Sickle said. "The next step in the process is going to the first assistant director, who is the primary safety officer on the set, and allowing them to visually inspect the weapon. At that point, they will call it out to the crew, they will call it out on the radio, that there’s a cold gun on set at that time,” Van Sickle said. “Any member of the crew or the cast that would like to look at that gun and confirm for themselves that it’s empty could do so.” (src - note that they mean look at the gun while the armorer held it for them, not mess around with it on their own)
"Every day I would show him (the actor) the empty firearm, load six dummy cartridges into the chambers so it looked fully loaded to camera, and demonstrate that it was completely safe by pointing it in a safe direction and pulling the trigger eight times." (src)
@jennkryst said in Movie / TV / Streaming Peeves or Whatever:
Because THEN we can blame Alec Baldwin TWICE for this... once for not insisting on saftey on the production side of things, and then again for fucking around after saftey was not followed.
I have no idea what Baldwin's responsibilities were as producer, whether it was a vanity title or what. It's also unclear whether the violations of safety procedures may have been obvious to him, and what obligation he may have had to speak up. Time will tell what liability he bears.
None of the analogies we're making are going to fit the situation perfectly so there's only so far we can get debating them.
The fact remains that the safety experts within the film industry have well-established practices for handling firearms. Don't take my word for it. There are plenty of interviews you can go and read/watch to hear why the professional armorers and safety experts believe that it's safer to not have actors performing the weapons checks themselves. Folks who want to disagree with them are certainly entitled to do so.
I have no personal stake in the matter. But one more imperfect analogy for the road: if you've got a perfectly good pre-flight checklist, well-proven over thousands of flights, and some nitwit decides to ignore it and just take off without checking anything and crashes? The problem probably isn't with the pre-flight checklist. It's with the nitwit who didn't follow it.
@jennkryst said in Movie / TV / Streaming Peeves or Whatever:
As for 'the actors have to focus on acting, they should not have to stop and check their equipment for saftey'... if they can't do that, then maybe they should not be acting in roles where saftey measures are needed? For example... I do not want to eat a meal prepared by a cook who only focused on making the food taste good, but had no regard for salmonella.
Except in the film analogy the actor is more like the server who brings you the food, not the cook. The cook prepares the meal; the armorer prepares the weapons.
We've been focusing on guns, but what about other stunts? If an actor is doing a parachute stunt, should we expect them to learn how to pack their own parachute? If they're doing a wire-work stunt, should we expect them to inspect all the rigging? If they're doing a car-driving stunt, should we expect them to open the hood and check the engine? Of course not. Actors rely on the professionals around them to ensure that a set is safe.
@jennkryst said in Movie / TV / Streaming Peeves or Whatever:
I personally haven't heard any of the pro-gun folks call the film out for unrealistic muzzle flashes, but they could be out there.
I dunno about pro-gun advocates, but in the articles I linked previously there were actors/directors commenting about the look and reactions of CGI muzzle flashes. So there are people who care. (I'm not one of them, I'm just passing along info.)
@Derp I don't work in the film industry specifically, but I deal with safety regulations and risk analysis in my job so a lot of that training translates. I got a bit hyperfocused on this particular incident wondering how the heck it could have happened, and ended up spending entirely more time than is healthy researching the subject. A LOT of armorers have spoken out about the typical on-set safety practices.
Here's a good article from American Cinematographer that pre-dates the Rust tragedy and explains a lot about how firearms are normally handled on set.
@23quarius said in Movie / TV / Streaming Peeves or Whatever:
The thing I was reading said he was practicing for a cross draw, not filming for the real deal, so I don't really... understand why the hell the gun needed visually realistic bullets for that purpose...
I tend to agree. I've read accounts from other sets where they practice with completely fake plastic gun mocks until the moment of filming, which seems safer overall.
@23quarius said in Movie / TV / Streaming Peeves or Whatever:
I mean the gun tore THROUGH a person and into somebody else. That sounds like FMJ
Yes, the authorities have confirmed that it was a real, live bullet in the gun.
@mietze said in Movie / TV / Streaming Peeves or Whatever:
its time that perhaps we consumers could live with special effects.
Personally I'm fine with that. I read that Mare of Easttown used CGI muzzle flashes. I couldn't tell the difference.
I just think we shouldn't lose sight of the just HOW FREAKING MANY safety rules had to be violated for this to happen.
Live ammo had to get onto the set somehow.
Whoever loaded the gun had to not notice they were loading live ammo.
TWO people who were supposed to verify that the gun was safe failed to do so.
And those are just the verifiable facts - there are other accusations not verified. Crew members using the props on their time off, guns being left unattended on carts, chain of custody issues with the weapons once loaded, even more live ammo mixed in with the prop ammo, crew members raising safety concerns and being ignored, etc. etc.
There's a certain threshold of negligence at which all the safety regulations in the world won't help because the people involved aren't following them.
@23quarius said in Movie / TV / Streaming Peeves or Whatever:
I am ignorant and dumb, why the hell would live rounds be anywhere on a movie set?
That's the million dollar question that will determine whether this is a criminal matter or just negligence.
Unless you're Adam Savage shooting Iron Man armor for a documentary or something, industry safety standards say there should never be live rounds on sets.
Yet this sort of error has happened before--even on military training exercises where regulations are even stricter. Somebody had live rounds from some other day and gets them mixed up, leaves a round in the chamber, has a misfire that doesn't clear (ala the Crow incident), grabs the wrong box off the shelf when preparing the batch of ammo for the day, etc. That's why it's so critical to have MULTIPLE levels of safety checks involved, so that any one human screw-up isn't going to kill somebody. And why it's so staggering that all those levels failed on Rust.
Snap caps are so cheap and come in colors and materials that are so obviously fake you can see they're fake from the MOON, do they not use them???
There are various reasons in a film why you don't want to be able to see that the bullets are fake. Like in this case, because it's a revolver and you can see the rounds in the cylinder. Or if the actor has to load bullets during the scene. You want dummy rounds that can't fire but look real.
Also, many directors feel that blanks give a more immersive feel. They look better (CGI muzzle flashes don't quite look right) and the actors react more realistically (the pop of gunpowder in a blank makes them flinch). And of course it's cheaper.
Sure, we can sit here and say that everybody should just use CGI because it's safer, but where do you draw the line? Do we ban on-set explosions too because somebody might get hurt? What about wire stunts? Car chases? I don't think that's the right answer.
Instead perhaps there should be more stringent licensing or regulations about armorers. Maybe inspections, penalties, etc. to discourage productions from cutting corners on safety.
@testament said in The ADD/ADHD Thread (cont'd from Peeves):
Her consoler couldn't even prescribe that, she had to refer her to a literal psychologist in order to get a proper medication.
That’s not unusual or bad. Counselors have a different set of training than psychologists and psychiatrists. They each operate under different kinds of licenses and have different limits on what they can do.
Not believing ADHD is a thing is just kind of mind-boggling. Do they believe in leeches as well?
Seriously, it’s boggling.
It's just too similar in form and function to the quoted-content line, which is making me think that everything is a quote.
@ghost said in Paying for a MU*?:
@faraday Agreed on the tip jar, but I feel an entry fee at the door is the line. If access is locked behind a paywall, even if it's called a tip jar, it's arguable in court.
Oh, I was just speaking for myself. I'm not going after anyone for having a tip jar on their Ares/FS3 game to cover hosting fees. Paying for perks or paying to play, though? That's clear-cut commercial use which is against the terms of service.
Courts and other copyright holders will draw their own lines in the sand.
Everything @ghost points out is spot on.
For the record, the license agreements for both FS3 and Ares come with express prohibitions against commercial purposes. Tip jar to cover hosting fees is not what I'd consider "commercial" though - basically it just means don't try to make money off my work.
There have been a lot of pay-to-play MUDs, and ones that offer premium benefits like the Iron Realms family.
My friend worked for one of the big paid MUD houses back in the heyday. It was quite a venture - IT staff, paid GMs/admins, and so forth.
It's hard to imagine successfully translating that to a MUSH environment. You'd have to have an absurd GM-to-player ratio to provide enough entertainment to satisfy players, and that would be tough to scale up to a level where you could pay them all.
@derp said in Forum wonk:
Seems like if we're going to try to preserve/archive things and not lose any data, figuring out a way to migrate the DB from Redis to Mongo is the way to go. If we're gonna set up funds to do that, I'm relatively sure that the people here would pitch in and put that together relatively quickly.
I agree that's a sound option, but they can also explore creating a static archive (web scrape, or maybe nodebb has something built in) that is non-operational but maintains an archive for posterity.
(Reposting because my post apparently got eaten by the RAM monster.)