Posts made by faraday

@surreality said in X-Cards:

if staff won't ban for that kind of RL-targeted aggro behavior, get the fuck off that game and burn the world setting in your client like a bridge to ne'er deign cross again.

That's where I think the hobby can improve. Staff needs to make it clear that setting boundaries is okay and then enforce that to a reasonable degree.

I say 'reasonable' because I do think there are some gray areas. "I don't want my character to be choked" (a very specific attack) or "I don't want to be in a scene where my PC has to react to a suicide or a dead child" (a fairly uncommon plotline) are things that you can reasonably work around.

But it would absolutely not be reasonable for me to sign on to play on a WoD game and demand "I don't want my character to interact with any supernatural stuff" or to play on a BSG game and claim that I'm triggered by PTSD-related war situations. Sometimes the game just isn't for you.

@Arkandel said in X-Cards:

TLDR; if you don't like something to the point where it's a roleplay deal breaker for yourself, the onus is on you to make these requirements known ahead of time or to remove yourself as swiftly and unobtrusively as possible without requiring anyone to cater to you.

Absolutely not. I can't imagine many things less savory than people - who already feel bad and who're obligated to stand out for themselves and say "ahem, sorry guys, this feels awkward" to have to either hide the fact or broadcast their vulnerabilities somehow (what, their wiki?) just in case they come up.

Why is saying "sorry, awkward" so unsavory? Let's say the theme of your game is "gritty post-apocalyptic drama, rated M for mature", and you decide to run a plot where a kid gets sick and dies. Six other players are involved. I should not derail everybody else's RP just because I have a trigger point of "kids in peril", when that's something that's clearly in bounds of the game's theme and rating. I can politely write my character out of the scene or (if it's 1-on-1) fade to black. We already do that all the time when people have to leave for RL reasons.

We should be sensitive to peoples' triggers, yes, but it's a two-way street. The person with sensitive subjects needs to be willing to communicate that with other players in some fashion and work with them to figure out the best solution. That's why I don't like the idea of X-Cards because there's no cooperation; no compromise.

@Ghost said in X-Cards:

This, I feel, is where the X-card doesn't pass the test. @faraday hit the nail on the head when she mentioned that the point of the X-card is "no questions asked". This is a key point to the X-card because the method believes that one should not have to justify why they pushed the X-card, and that an immediate detour needs to be made to be inclusive to their wishes.

Yeah. In the same vein, I don't think that "modify the X-Cards system if you don't like it being no-questions-asked" passes the bullet test either. If you're among reasonable adults and are willing to communicate your boundaries, then you don't need the X-Cards in the first place. The entire point of the system is to get around those limitations for environments where people are uncomfortable speaking up and/or might get pressured to cave if they do.

Sure, you could create a wholly different system (like the tag thing @Auspice mentioned) but that really wasn't what we're talking about here.

@Thenomain said in X-Cards:

Then the system needs altered out of its original purpose for a new medium.

The whole purpose of the card system is to be no questions asked. If you invite questions, you invite peer pressure of the “aw come on don’t be a spoil spot” or “why are you overreacting” variety.

Personally I agree with what others said earlier... I’d prefer just open communication where adults can adult and say “you’re being skeevy, knock it off” or “this plot line bothers me because X”. If you have a culture of making each other comfortable, you don’t need cards. But among strangers in a con circuit or something where there’s a pattern of harassment and such a culture doesn’t exist? I can understand the appeal.

@Tinuviel No idea. The documentation doesn't say (that I could find) but it seems like it would be easy enough to test.

@Arkandel It seems that a plugin for that does not already exist, although there is a feature request for something similar that folks could comment on/upvote if they like.

@Ghost There's an option under the privacy settings to "Only allow chat messages from users I follow". So you can kinda use that as a whitelist.

@Auspice said in King of Sex Mountain:

aka developing a sex game in FS3 (sorry @faraday).

Hey, Ares/FS3 is about enabling other people to build the games they want, not the game I want. Good luck!

(Btw, Ares has a parallel mechanism for registering alts with tags, without requiring player handles.)

@Ghost said in How to Escape the OOC Game:

I'm not gonna tell it out of a bullhorn, though. There's speakers at high school these days who use shock and awe tactics during presentations to show parents just how easy it is to find someone through social media for that particular speech.

Everything in life is a risk. Want to take this philosophy to extremes? Live with a family member with OCD and anxiety, or participate in hazard analysis on safety-critical engineering devices at work. Fun times! (not)

Anyway, you have to balance the risk of a thing with the rewards of doing it and the consequences of not doing it. Reasonable people will reach different conclusions based on the perceived benefits and risks, but scare tactics help no one.

In fact, over-inflating extremely unlikely events are can lead to societal silliness like kids not being able to play in their own front yards unsupervised these days without somebody calling child protective services.

@Ghost said in How to Escape the OOC Game:

But if someone's losing their shit because their dice are sucking or they lost an election? Sure, it's disappointing, but upkeep your reaction buffer, bruh.

That's really not what anyone here was talking about, though. Sure, people get upset to silly degrees about TV shows, sporting events, etc. That's a separate issue. The discussion was specifically around stalking/harassment/threats/etc. online. That's a whole other level of emotional pressure/stress/injury/damage/whatever-you-want-to-call-it, and the fact that it's happening with text instead of words doesn't diminish its impact. An assailant could punch you in the face, break your kneecap or stab you 10 times, but it's still an assault any way you slice 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.)

@Lotherio said in How to Escape the OOC Game:

I concur, and I don't think I meant to imply people only play with known others. I did concur with @Rook such that I've seen differences where if no one knows me, I get less RP (sometimes none), and if I am myself I get a little more RP. Correlative, but not direct statistical relation, certainly not equivalent; didn't meant to imply some slippery slope there, sorry..

Just to be clear, I'm not disputing your basic point about getting more RP when people know you.

I think the "ideal world" I'm talking about is a little different than what we've had before, though. It's like that George Carlin quote: "What is an unknown person? Surely everyone is known to someone."

In the old-school MU world, your only identity (unless you labeled and broadcast yourself) was Bob@ThisGame. You're an enigma. Enigmas can be off-putting, especially when so may folks have been burned by creepers in the past.

But with something like the Ares handles, you you at least have an identity as a player. A profile. A history. Even someone who hasn't RPed with you might have crossed paths with you on some game in the past, or at least be peripherally aware of who you are in the community. They may not know who you are, but they have some inkling of who you're not.

Like @Ghost said, I don't think that player identities is some magic bullet solution for all social ills, but I do believe it's a net benefit.

@Lotherio said in How to Escape the OOC Game:

Among old folks who've played and know where to find RP (including other games when its dry spell) and such, or who know how to get going even as a new player, its not a thing. Even as @faraday mentioned, being known means its easier if you have a good reputation. However, relative to the concept of the OOC game, its not very newbie friendly to only play with known commodities, just in my opinion.

You're equating "people can know who each other are" with "and thus they only play with known quantities".

These two things are not equivalent.

Sure, there are some folks who will only play with known quantities - just as there are some people in RL who will only hang out with their friends at a party.

But there are also people who will see the new guy in the corner by him/herself and go over and introduce themselves.

@Auspice Heh, yes, but I don't think we actually RPed because I didn't have a pilot char. Maybe in an air combat scene I ran or something. Anyway, general point still stands

@Ghost already knows that we're kind of on opposite ends of the ballfield here, and that's okay. As long as you're not harming anyone, I think that everybody should play these games the way that's fun for them. If that means tuning out the OOC stuff, more power to them. That's why the Ares handle system is 100% optional. People have a right to privacy.

But since we're talking about the "OOC Game" I wanted to say why I'm in favor of it, and why Ares does encourage it.

I think that anonymity and emotional distance are at the root of the general toxicity of the Internet at large. It's so easy to tear down a name on a screen, or to think the worst of someone, or be unduly irritated by some perceived slight when you have no other connection to the person.

The way you fight this is through empathy, and one way to do that is building interpersonal connections. So when you meet SomeChar@SomeGame, it's like: "Oh, it's @Three-Eyed-Crow! We had a blast playing nurses on TGG together back in the day." I haven't really RPed with @Sparks, for instance (maybe once somewhere?), but I would definitely approach a first-time in-game meeting more positively than I would some random stranger based on our conversations here.

Of course this works both ways. If you get a bad reputation, that can work against you, and people can hold grudges. It can make it harder to break into friend circles when you're the new person. But all that is true in real life too, and the solution in real life isn't to isolate yourself. That's my 2 cents anyway.

@Cupcake @Tomorrow There seems to be a bug with the web chat if you don't have any page conversations. Will get a fix out for that soon. In the mean time, if you just page somebody in-game (or have them page you), I think the error will go away. (or not; stay tuned)

@Three-Eyed-Crow said in Poll: Do I enjoy this hobby more than I don't?:

Eh, while I don't know if it's thousands, the openings at Spirit Lake and Gray Harbor recently (Ares games) lead me to believe it's way above anything like 200. There are different pools of players in different genres that seem to rarely touch each other and it can be dramatic when they do.

I would agree. My ballpark would be in the high hundreds, maaaaybe just over a thousand of us, counting super-casual players. It's a guess, but an educated one; I don't think there's any way for us to establish definitively.

Mudstats lists 120 games in the MUSH/MUX category, but when you actually look at the list -- there are entire pages of games that may still have a server port open but haven't been active in years (Otherspace, TGG, Firan, etc.), are social hubs (M-U-S-H, 8BitMUSH the ansi art place, etc.), are porn places (as Ghost pointed out)... once you tick them off the list, there just aren't many MUSH games.

But it also comes down to how you define "a MUSH game". Was Battletech 3065 (basically a coded mech simulator, very MUDlike to me) a MUSH just because it ran on TinyMUSH? Is Shang? What are the essential defining characteristics of "MUSH" compared to other online text-based game types?

We could go round and round on this all day and each reach different conclusions because we're not starting from the same set of definitions.

@Sunny said in Poll: Do I enjoy this hobby more than I don't?:

Cool. When I refer to the broader community of mushers, I am referring to the people who roleplay on mushes. And by that definition, there are thousands of people that play, and MSB is a drop in the bucket.

Great. And when I refer to the broader community of MUSHers, I am referring to the people who roleplay on MUSHes based on a different definition of what we call a MUSH that has nothing to do with server type and everything to do with the kind of game they're running on that server. And by that definition, there are not thousands of people that play, and MSB is a larger percentage of them.

Aren't we glad we cleared that up?

@Sunny said in Poll: Do I enjoy this hobby more than I don't?:

No. This data is literally by server type. Arx is not a mush, it runs on Evennia. Mush players are People Who Play On Mushes. There is a broader community. If this is the mushing community to you, that's fine, but I was referring to the bigger one that there is LITERALLY data to support my point.

Data is numbers. It's how you interpret the data that matters. Reasonable people can interpret the same data differently.

For instance, MUDConnector lists Arx under "MUSH" even though it's a different server type. It lists 80-some MUSHes, by their definition.

MUDStats goes by server types, so yes - there are folks using MUSH servers for other things like RPIs, or "M*U*S*H" the social hub or defunct games that haven't been open for business for years. It also lists 80-some MUSHes, by their definition.

By my definition, which has nothing whatsoever to do with MSB and everything to do with the kind of game, there are far fewer than 80-some actual MUSH games open. And way, way, way less than "thousands" of people playing them.

You're allowed to have a different definition. Just recognize that we're talking apples and oranges here.

@Sunny Yes, and look at what MUDConnector actually counts as "MUSH" and you'll see a variety of social hubs and the more in-between things like Arx that appeal to a wider audience. The number of actual MUSH games is a smaller percentage of that. Counting alts and people connected to more than one game, and 1600 connections is a very different thing than "thousands of players".

As I said - we have different definitions.

@Sunny said in Poll: Do I enjoy this hobby more than I don't?:

Did you read my whole post, or stop there?

Yes, did you read mine? I reject the assertion that there are "thousands of people playing MUSHes" when there just aren't that many MUSHes in existence currently. Unless you're asserting that there's some secret trove of hundreds of games out there that are not advertised on M.U.S.H/MUDConnector/here/any active MU's bboard/etc. in which case please share with the rest of us?