Posts made by GangOfDolls

Every time I've eaten Sonic there's been bone in the meat.

Ow.
So tears and sadness.

But I love their chilli cheese tots and blue coke, so its a draw.

@Kanye-Qwest said in Sensitive cultural/political/religious aspects of game themes.:

@GangOfDolls said in Sensitive cultural/political/religious aspects of game themes.:

@Kanye-Qwest said in Sensitive cultural/political/religious aspects of game themes.:

@GangOfDolls said in Sensitive cultural/political/religious aspects of game themes.:

At least with the rape scenario, it fits sorta loosely under the premise of "plot" but this is just some PC dudes being a garbage fire in character for no apparent reason.

Wow.

Go on?

Edit To Add: You're having a reaction to this, which I get but I'm asking what's bugging you about this.

I don't think "John decided to rape Jill because John is a rapist" is any more valid of a 'plot' than "Bob is a racist dickwad so he's out in public trying to make black people feel bad about themselves", and I found it kind of shocking that you'd assert it is.

Okay, I see and this is a fair point. Hopefully you'll allow me to expound a little?

My statement was owing to what the OP set up the scenario as. That this happened in game, there was a lot of RP around it, including people going on a man hunt, and there was an +event that resolved it (i.e. the trial). The presented format: A then B than C and finally D happens could be constituted as a plot only because its a series of public, serial events open to participation.

This versus some PCs walk into a bar for no reason and get their hellish asshole on.

I don't think this constitutes plot either and were I staff, its not something I would label as such or even allow in my game for public consumption and also hope that this is not a thing that's privately circulating in a play group on the game (I've seen this happen in games with no public plots of this nature policies). So yeah, I don't think its plot either but I was responding to the OP and how based on the presented information, I didn't see these situations as nearing equal based on various elements.

@Kanye-Qwest said in Sensitive cultural/political/religious aspects of game themes.:

@GangOfDolls said in Sensitive cultural/political/religious aspects of game themes.:

At least with the rape scenario, it fits sorta loosely under the premise of "plot" but this is just some PC dudes being a garbage fire in character for no apparent reason.

Wow.

Go on?

Edit To Add: You're having a reaction to this, which I get but I'm asking what's bugging you about this.

@Ominous

I don't see these situations as equal, either.

In the first scenario, unless the game has some kind of no consent, never ever situation - the player avoiding the situation around sexual assault just has to say 'I don't want to RP about this and that includes hearing about it, reacting to it, etc.' and those around her just need to amend their RP but not bringing it up. This allows Jane to have plausible deniability about all of it and the people who want to RP about it, can RP about it and not include other people about it. The +event is actually doing Jane and players like her a favor. She doesn't need to come to that +event now that she knows about it and she can just not read the log.

I think TR set up a policy that basically was like this. That you could RP about this forever and ever if you wanted to but if someone OOCly asked you to not bringing it in any form to their doorstep, you were obligated to find any reason not to bring it up. And that doesn't require a lot of RP gymnastics, just don't talk about it with them and it's fine.

With the second, this is a very strange situation and I don't think I've ever seen something so completely on the nose in games but hey, maybe its happened like this. Most players who have uber racist PCs are not generally given to showing up in a public space on the grid and start dropping crazy racist talk without the slightest hesitation or effort to edit for public consumption. Who does that? Maybe the point is that they are trolling for OOC reasons but this scenario is predicated on: some PCs walk into a bar and act like moron racists to no particular IC end.

At least with the rape scenario, it fits sorta loosely under the premise of "plot" but this is just some PC dudes being a garbage fire in character for no apparent reason. Unless their goal is to be marginalised IC to give other people to a thing do, then I'm not sure how this is anything but just being disruptive in game.

There's a lot of things PCs could do that pretty much boils down to disruptiveness. You could, for example, decide your PC snaps one day for no good or supportable IC reason, grabs a gun, and decides to shoot up a public grid space. I mean, sure, that could maybe happen but a game staff with two nickles of sense to rub together is probably not going to allow that happen because its such a can of worms to no appreciable end that there's zero upside to allowing it.

I'm trying to figure out if I can afford to buy a house in a hyper inflated real estate market where everyone's offering $100-200k over asking, cash, and waiving inspections. I make a decent salary but I have a lot of student loans and had to dip into my savings when I was unemployed for longer than anticipated a few years ago.

My biggest issue is finding ways to save more money every month while meeting obligations and trying to pay down debt from said unemployment period.

I have no idea if this is possible in reality or if I'm going to jut have to rent for a few more years.

@lordbelh Yeah I'd say that's true. The problem as you point out is you have to get everyone on board with it which in a lot of online games is the central point where it falls apart.

@Insomnia

Fixed!

Oh maybe? The article I read said it was today but they may have the date wrong?

Ignore me!

ETA: Correcting wrong date

@RDC said in NOLA: The Game That Care Forgot:

Speaking of LARP: Do people think there'd be any interest in borrowing certain concepts from LARP games, particularly some concepts relating to Boons, Status, and Renown effects from the BNS books? I'm on the fence as to whether they'd add or subtract from a MU* setting - there are a lot of similarities between MU* and LARP, and they're certainly more similar to each other than either are to tabletop, but I'm unsure as to whether borrowing would be better than not.

Bonus, status, and Renown generally doesn't work in MU* settings, I've found. It just, unfortunately, doesn't work for a couple reasons:

• Buying Status & Renown in Cgen: Everyone does it if its an option and most games don't police if the amount of either being purchased because it becomes so ubiquitous that it loses all of its meaning and value. Players easily and readily ignore it in a way you can't in a live action setting unless you want to die.

• The Revolving Door Nature of PC Leadership: Status and especially boons are often swept away in Sept Alpha and Praxis Seizure changes. The PCs that might be recording and tracking this information to any meaningful end tend to eventually fade out, these records get fubar, and it's all meaningless. In a Larp setting, even if there's a new Prince every month-- they are generally at the game and you have ways of getting their attendance. Not so in MU* where tracking down people is hard and getting them to RP with you about this stuff can be harder.

• Status and Boon Enforcement: In Larp settings, its a lot harder to get away with ducking out of a boon and being a turd to someone with higher status than you, 9 times out of 10 - if you do either, it's on and cracking and usually ends with your PC getting dragged to a boot party. In a MU* setting, its a lot easier to just hang out in your hideyhole and never come out as staff is often loathe to allow haven raids, etc. PC leaders will evade every chance to enforce these things because there is such a resistance to PvP because it goes so poorly and players react so badly when it doesn't go their way that its exhausting and it burns out PC leadership.

• Immediate Consequences and Benefits In General: In larp, your status and boons can be an immediate button you push when you want something and you want it 2 minutes ago because everyone's assembled for play that night, you only have 4ish hours to pack in your to-do list for the month, etc -- basically, created immediacy. In MU* you have to find the person/people, get them to agree to something, get them to show up to something, deal with the scene over a course or days if people can't all be on at once, and then finally execute. That's exhausting and so people stop bothering.

I think therefore if you want to try and include that in your game then it becomes something staff has to track and enforce, which generally comes with a lot of conflict so you have to have staff willing to take it on the chin and crack skulls when they must.

I guess the thing that breaks my brain about 'well its there but not really' or 'well some NPCs that you won't interact with will act badly' or 'there will be shade but not actually any directly experienced shade' is that if its there but people are looking for ways to mitigate it like this, then why have it in the theme at all?

And not just this game but any game where there's a repressive social element that is central to theme, this is presented as being a big deal in theme, and then ignored or only sorta lazily goes through the motions of it being around to avoid actual consequences on this theme?

Like, its sorta like games that have huge, dire rivalries between Group A and Group B where there's years old blood feud, murder hungry hatred and when these groups encounter each other in game...

They do fancy dances like the Sharks and the Jets and talk some mess but avoid actual escalation for any and all reasons because PvP isn't actually okay.

I still (personally and only speaking for myself) don't love the bigoted themes but I'm just sorta not getting the 'well its there but really its not' sorta approach in games that have this.

I've been thinking about this alot and my answer still generally sorta circles back to the same thing:

Will engaging in this RP give me something I didn't already know?

Will engaging in this RP make me feel fundamentally worse about myself/the world?

These answers to these questions are entirely personal. I do know what my hard pass limits are in terms of things that won't be edifying and will just make me feel like shit: toxic relationships on an infinite loop, cheating in romantic personal RP (being the cheater or the cheated on) where there is no advance OOC agreement that this could happen and everyone's cool, rape/sexual assault plots, and casual bigotry and racism that won't change or will get worse.

And you participate or not as you are so inclined.

In a larger perspective, other games in other formats also run into this. I was involved in a discussion with someone who is developing a game based in US History in New England after the American Revolution. He's wrestling a lot with whether or not to include slavery as a thing.

He can either make it so that slavery was not a thing for various revisionist reasons and the people who make up that game population would exist as any other white, land owning dude at the time.

Or

He can include slavery and portray it accurately, including having it be a playable template where your PC is probably never going to be released into their autonomy and (eta) probably treated fucking horribly.

To do the first is to gloss over that it happened and make it more palatable for the people who wouldn't play because they don't want to play in a game that even has that going for it. But in doing so, makes a very important black eye in the history of the US non-extant and makes a whole other social, economic, and psychological aspects of theme that much harder to explain or have happen.

To do the second will certainly send people fleeing in the other direction of participation because there are people who will not for whatever personal reasons want to touch that theme with a 10 foot pole.

Or

The will touch it with a 10 foot pole and try and 'fix it' by immediately freeing the slaves and avoiding any RP about the thing we did but won't talk about because its too horrible to contemplate. We fixed it and we've moved on. Quickly.

There's kind of a no-win thing here. And I'm not sure there are any good compromises. I think it comes down to you either accept your theme has grimdark edgelordy themes and you don't make any effort to put lipstick on it or you don't include them or re-imagine a universe that this didn't happen in. It's kind of an all or nothing proposition.

As a PC, for example, I can avoid a rape story line in game by being firm that I don't want to RP about this, don't drag me into this, and take it elsewhere. It's a single act of awful brutality but it won't actually necessarily (hopefully) sink the game. Wholesale perverse religious or cultural values aren't in the same bag though. A PC can't escape these things as the world is soaked in it. So its either in or out. Unfortunately.

So yeah, I think for me it comes down to it not being my cuppa.

I really wanted it to work because I like the idea of this but I can't get down with some of the less PC things they're working with. My comments were intended to evaluate this from a point of inclusion as you may lose players who would otherwise be great contributors to the game but are uncomfortable with issues like this.

Like me.

But I contribute nothing because I'm the worst

Right and I want to clarify that individuals are free to play there or not as they see fit.

For me though, I have a hard time with this aspect of theme. I'm a person of color and experience enough awkwardness to sheer actual terribleness in my real life around an aspect of myself I cannot change. While I don't see parity in being PoC and being gay, I do see both of these as things aspects of yourself you cannot change and that there are very real safety issues for both groups everywhere.

For me, also, I play in various MU* to escape the hard presses of reality and for me and my reality, being treated a Other for my cultural origins is a reality. There are some people who want to work through or explore or unpack dark topics like this and others on games. But for me, I work through this enough in my real life that I don't want to also have to work through it in my game life.

It's pretendy but its definitely not fun.

And I am uncomfortable with the contradictory messages of inclusiveness OOG but not IG. I think that you can have a very fine supernatural game full of conflict and high drama and plenty of actions without this needing to be a facet of these things.

YMMV but that's why I'm about it.

So some questions about policy and theme that I saw when I was on earlier:

Quoted from the game itself (though in parts because its a long ass post and if you want to read all of it, you can on the game):

Also, related to this topic is sexuality in the shadowhunter world. As anyone who has seen the movie, the TV series or read the Mortal Instrument books knows, being gay is not viewed kindly in the shadowhunter world. While roles in their world are genderless, the world of the shadowhunter is very "old school" and is absolutely not Politically Correct. That's a mundane thing. Players who can't deal with this aspect will find it very hard to play a shadowhunter.

The stigma of being gay is one that most shadowhunters really hope to avoid, but most will know that it is less about their sexual preference and more about the selfishness of the sexuality itself. Shadowhunters numbers are dwindling, and it is imperative that hunters produce offspring. Another factor is that in this culture marriage has very little to do with love.

....

Remember that this purely theme based. I'm mostly positive most players are perfectly fine with your choices or lifestyle RL. There is no need for OOC hurt feelings or asinine behavior on the topic.

So TLDR is:

Being gay is bad. If you are gay in this game, you will be treated badly.
Marriages to non-Shadowhunters is also not viewed as good.
This is theme. We're not getting weird about your real life. But you're not allowed to react to this, either.

Or that's... how I'm taking it?

So, I get that staff has a theme vision here but I'm a little concerned by going chapter and verse on this stuff (mostly the queer stuff). It seems a little backwards to go with this and force people to play cis straights or put yourself up for persecution for your IG orientation if you don't want to do that. And maybe some people do?

But to then tell players that they're not basically allowed to have a reaction to that that isn't positive is the part that seems so unnecessary? Like, yes, people will have a reaction to this and it will not be positive and I don't think its a good idea to tell them that its not allowed.

If you want to this game to be a success from the point of view that we have plenty of gay/nonbinary/queer/trans people in our MU* community that would like to support this type of game, making it a theme where their experiences are up for stigmatization and mistreatment in game has a chilling effect.

I would encourage this to be rethought.

Also, feel free to move this to the Pit.

I also had the same question. I watched about 1/3 of the pretty terrible movie on a plane that resulted from the book series and that's about all I know from/about it which is to say: pretty people, dead moms, lol demons.

Champagne and Cuba Libre gummy bears from Sugarfina.

I was looking at Arx but didn't realize that it was a roster system. In the experience of those playing there, do characters change hands frequently? And how jarring is it?

I found Dystopia, similar in that it had a roster system, had to get settled into as other people connected to your PC would change hands or wouldn't be active and so your immediate sphere of RP would be kind of tough to get going. Not sure if its like that on Arx, I'm just a little gunshy of this style.

Also, I'm a little uncertain how much information the application for a roster spot the staffers want? Not knowing a ton about the game world, my reaction to picking and requesting a specific character is more like 'that sounds like an interesting challenge'. But I don't have at the same time, any sort of strict plans - I don't know enough yet to really articulate social calculations.

@Arkandel Thanks for your feedback! I'm not sure if Arx is homebrew or not? (I'm a high fantasy newb) But KD is a book series, yes? So in one or both of these cases, is not knowing the source material a high bar for entry?

(Zooooooooombie thread riiiiiiiiiise aaaaarrrgggghhhh)

Okay so, I didn't want to post this to Gingerlily's apology because not the place/time.

But here's basically my thing:

My regular games are all hitting holiday horselatitudes.
My family just hits ffwd on the holidays so we don't do much.
I normally disappear into an MMO or something about now but I can't find anything that appeals this year.
I just want sooooooomething to do for a bit and the premise of KD sounds cool even though it sounds like a dumpster fire in other ways. I read through all of it and oy, but I figure I might be fine if I just show up for the lulz and don't get attached.

So is it even worth it that much?
Is this game still a thing?
If no and no, does anyone have any non-WOD/non-superheros/Transformer recommendations?