You know, I just wanted to take a moment to say that I think the new policies regarding avoiding personal attacks will do everyone better in the long run, and are probably exactly what the hobby needs.

On the Hog Pit
I never really did agree that a place like the Hog Pit was necessary or "for the better". In fact, I think the concept of it was a lot like "The Purge". SURE give everyone a place where they can murder and commit crimes and it'll get it out of their system. The end result, I think, was that it normalized venom and incentivized people to attack one another for others' entertainment, to gain ground with fellow bullies, and to take one's personal issues out on victims for sport.

On going forward
It occurs to me that for YEARS there hasn't been a real gathering for people who MU to get together and be a COMMUNITY that actually enforced...respectful behavior. Sure, the Hog Pit was "opt-in" but it was easily the most popular place on the forum and bleed-over was constant. Every other day it seemed a topic needed to be moved to the Hog Pit because people were being nasty.

In short, ACTUALLY having a place where people can gather as a community to be respectful and (dare I say) neighborly will do people good in the long run. People were -afraid- to join MSB because of the venom, and now with the new policies and attitude in place I think you'll end up getting a lot of the nicer, more constructive types to feel welcome.

No offense to the people who like the L&L games, but this thought came to my head:

LORDS AND LADIES CHARACTER SHEET:

INSTRUCTIONS: Fill in the blanks, then you're ready to go.

My name is __________ of House ________ and I'm fucking __________, but I'm supposed to be fucking __________.

Check THIS out...

New Alien RPG is coming. Why this is intriguing (especially in a mush sense) is because this TT RPG is boasting tools to run 2 different kinds of games...

1. Campaign mode. Long term. Etc.

2. Cinematic mode, which is designed for 1 shots and single nights of gaming.

Cinematic mode may contain some tools and ideas (perhaps even systems) that might work well in some mush event contexts.

Either way, preorders start 5 days from now, and once the pre-order is verified you get the Cinematic Rules PDF starter kit.

Oh...and yes...it includes both "Ripley and the Nostromo" styled setting information (I.e. Space truckers come across alien eggs and Weyland-Yutani fuckery) as well as...

COLONIAL MARINES, BETCH

Squeeeeeeeeee.

In that light, I apologize for calling @saosmash a mean thing.

I missed an opportunity to private message or reply with something like "hey, come on, I'm not trying to piss on something you like, I'm just being snarky about a concept I don't get"

But instead I was like:

I missed an opportunity to present myself as who I am in spirit, and that's 100pct on me.

I think you did a good thing in the end @shangexile . I commend you for that.

@zombiegenesis I think that's an excellently worded summary, to be honest.

Even right now, the people who are still banned (some who are coming back to start trouble) are just gathering and saying nasty things about pretty much anyone who ever told them no or disagreed with them. It's super toxic and it's really not constructive to any sort of rationally comfortable environment that reasonable people would want to be a part of. It's just NOT OK.

I'd originally intended to hang back even if my ban was lifted, but seeing that an attempt is being made to course correct from "unmitigated personal attacks" to "trying to be more positive and foster an environment of respect"? I'm hanging around to see what's up. I'm glad to keep communicating with a vast number of you.

I think the major issue in the end is the concept of "reputational income" and what happens if you have a bad reputation being in this constant "eye of the beholder" state with some very disrespectful, very demanding, and very unfair people. You see a lot of posts from them with the "you need to change your behavior or else..." verbiage from them, and I recently likened it to someone like the mafia asking you "are you sure this is what you want?" after an extortion attempt.

Maybe people can just be regular people, right? With flaws, who make mistakes, who aren't perfect, and who don't need to live up to the demands and expectations of the same 15 or so blowhards with superiority complexes that demand everyone meet their standards or face ridicule/belittlement?

I've chimed off on this before (re: FC sexuality), but I don't think the concern is so much on the sexuality of the character. I think it has more to do with how the character will behave under the control of the player.

I have no issues with a female Captain America or even a gay Captain America (there might be a compelling story to tell in Steve Rogers arriving in the modern age and realizing that he can be gay in 2017 with a certain amount of respect that wasn't prevalent in 1941).

I like to think that players would approach those gender/sexuality issues as a means of compelling story.

HOW and EVER...

I think the real concern people have is in a Captain America transported to 2017 as FUCK EVERYTHING THAT MOVES BONDAGE SEX SWING NEVER INVOLVES IN ANY STORY AND SENDS EVERYONE DICK PICS Captain America, thus really putting aside any meaningful role playing with the character concept in favor of using the character as a sandbox Shang Alt.

We'd seen mentions recently of gay fish Daken uncomfortably hitting on people IC and OOC, and mentions of Sex Magic Sorcerer Supreme Dr Strange.

So, in summary, I think the concern is less on gender/sexuality of the FC and more on whether or not they'll be used like a Harvey Weinstein extension of the player's whims, thus becoming more of a distraction than a contribution.

Friend's wife and fellow D&D group member has gone from ER to ICU to ventilator and sedation. Double pneumonia. Her Covid experience is going the wrong direction. Fuck this virus.

I've already got one memorial to attend after this nightmare ends so please do not go through airports unless it is absolutely necessary. Do not go to bars and restaurants unless absolutely necessary.

It's been made pretty clear by now that this virus doesnt care how little you're afraid of it. Dont fuck around and find out.

Counter-opinion:

There were different themes in behavior that I saw leading up to the bannings, with some people being far more disrespectful and venomous in their approach than others. Heck, I was even DM'ed to be informed what a slimy piece of shit I was, though in jest I was doing a little tongue-in-cheek trolling of the situation, myself.

If the focus of the forum going forward is to try to be respectful and positive, then some of those entitled personalities are best left off at that new forum they made (where when I was linked to it already saw personal attacks, fuck-marry-kill lists with actual people being listed as kill, etc). This forum isn't a paid-for service where users are entitled to getting what they want, nor is it required to maintain a level of "trust" even when "trust" is often mistaken for "doing what we say we want or else".

I recommend people who don't like it to let it go and glomp about it at that other place that's going to return to the same toxic behavior patterns.

@Auspice said in Disabilities and Mental Illness as Character Traits:

I also don't feel comfortable when someone has a disability for their character and they always have an 'escape' written in (is wheelchair bound, but can walk sometimes, is blind, but can see shapes and light now and then... etc.) that always comes into play when it's... convenient.

I hate that shit, mostly because the player took extra freebie points for being blind, but then doesn't roleplay it. Or, they took the points for taking some kind of BLIND flaw only to negate it with cybernetics.

It's like: "Dude, BLIND means CANNOT SEE. If your guy has cybernetic eyes, they can see, and therefore are no longer BLIND. If you can barely hear and then get a hearing aid or cochlear implants, the -4 to awareness checks doesn't apply."

But yes, I agree. Disabled but not is a peeve. It doesn't make me uncomfortable, I just think it's stupid, metagamey, and usually tied to jerking around with a character sheet.

But let's get to brass tacks, here.

House of the Dragon has GRRM's name on it. GRRM is an executive producer, writer, etc on it. GRRM has spoken positively about diversity of casting and has said he plans to introduce more BIPOC characters in upcoming novels...whenever those get finished. If GRRM felt it was so important that the Velaryons couldn't be black because of all of the reasons @Nymeria states that they simply cannot budge on non-white characters in their MUSH, he would have fought it tooth and nail.

It's not the ACTUAL CONTENT CREATOR who is taking a hard-line stance, crying about "woke SJW bullshit", saying racist things, or literally making the news for their toxicity. It's a pair of people who have decided more than once to gatekeep/act like the owners of someone else's actual work and do toxic things online in the name of someone who doesn't support their behavior.

With that in mind, I cannot say why I would allow those people to affect my legacy by remaining involved with them, why I would in any way support their MUSH, and hope that they get fired/cut loose to be left as a couple of MU hosts running a text-based chatty game in a world that they don't own.

So the most recent episode of Mandalorian (S3Ep4) hit me right in the feels. I'm gonna put this behind a spoiler tag, but AFTER you watch the episode (or if you don't care), check this out.

***Spoiler...orian?***

Anyone have any cool "great moments" to share from their TTRPGs? Nothing negative, but moments where it was magical, or as a GM you felt like you did something amazing for your group?

I'll start. This is actually a story from this past weekend.

I'm running V5 Vampire for an in-person TTRPG group of 5 players. It's set in Chicago using the "Chicago By Night" module, and I'm taking FULL advantage of all of the canon characters (Portia, Annabelle, Gengis, DuSable, etc). Now, 4 out of the 5 players are old-school VtM players so they know a lot of the lore, and the 5th is brand new to Vampire so I am LOVING being able to introduce them to dark, scary, evil lorepieces for the first time and see their reaction.

However, in V5, there are some new things, and one of them are "Thin-Blood" vampires, whose vampiric blood is so thinned out that they can survive the sunlight better, often have warm breath and flushed skin, and could often pass as a mortal. My "OG" players had never encountered one. They don't have typical vampire powers, and instead dabble in a kind of "Thin-Blood Alchemy" that the other non-thinbloods don't have access to.

So my vampires are following a drug dealer suspected of peddling a new drug called "Ash", which appears to be made of blood and ashes. They track him to his apartment, see him leaving. He's got pink skin, warm breath, and so they approach him like he's a human. Now, "mortals" don't really get a resistance to the vampiric "Dominate" powers, but other supernatural creatures do. So assuming he's mortal they decide to roll on up, get eye-contact, and "dominate" the drug dealer into being quiet and walking with them.

It went like this:

Player: Okay I look into his eyes and say "Be quiet and follow me".
Me: "Roll a rouse check and then roll your dice pool to dominate."
Player: "But mortals don't get a defense."
Me: "That is correct. Roll the dice."
The whole table: "Holy fuck please don't let this be a werewolf."

I had them all eating out of the PALM OF MY HAND as they had no idea what the fuck they'd just rolled up on. They eventually were able to wrestle the thin-blood down after he used some sort of strange power they'd never seen before on one of the PCs. They basically beat him up and dragged him back into his apartment.

They search the apartment and find a secret basement where occult circles, chemistry equipment, and books in a cramped, filthy space. At the end of the basement is a shower stall with an old "Spongebob" shower curtain concealing something shadowy.

The looks on the players' faces was PRICELESS as they peeled the shower curtain back to find a missing Toreador from court, suspended upside down, staked, and with tubes in all of their major arteries and an empty bucket underneath with dried blood residue lining it.

They'd just stumbled into an alchemical drug lab where the blood of their peers is being used to make a street drug that works on vampires.

They're eating this chronicle up and loving it, and it feels really good.

@TNP said in Ruiz:

I have nothing further to say so shall truly depart and let you all fade into irrelevancy

Please do. I've been asking yall to do it for ages.

@Derp Yeah there's that.

I've been told that detailing the DSM definition of mental illnesses and poring through them to determine if an unpopular person is lying is a thing, now.Which, doing so is potentially fuckoff levels of damaging on a RL scale while also being the exact antithesis of providing a safe space for people with mental and emotional difficulties.

So obviously the DSM5/6 definitions of everything from ADHD to Sociopathy would be useful to cut and paste into a forum chat.

Snark aside, I will say that the people who did that should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves, as well as the people who chose not to call it out.

@Misadventure I think you'd be better off creating a series of forms and pre-generated blocks of text to simply cut and paste to save time.

Stuff like:

"______________ is one of the most toxic people in the community."

"______________ isn't apologizing correctly."

"I am being gaslighted by _____________ "

"____________ is the new Cirno."

And the blanks are filled by drop-down list with a series of names.

AND THEN have a section where entire pre-written paragraphs of text can be copied and pasted to save time, like:

• SOCIAL DICE ARE BAD BECAUSE
• FIRAN WAS GREAT BUT HORRIBLE
• WE ARE NOT A CLIQUE BUT MY FRIENDS AND I ARE COORDINATING OUR RESPONSES AND BULLYING
• MY DOWNWITHOPP STORY
• WHITE PLAYER; POC PB
• ITS NOT CHEATING, IT'S ART
• SPIDER IS THE WORST
• THIS PERSON IS THE WORST SINCE SPIDER
• THIS PERSON IS THE WORST SINCE THE LAST PERSON WHO WAS WORSE THAN SPIDER
• IS IT STILL FETISHIZATION IF YOURE A FEMALE PLAYING A SUPER PROMISCUOUS GAY MAN? (yes, it is)

Sooner or later the algorithms will be able to heuristically complete an entire year of forum chatter, but in the meantime users will be able to simply click twice and respond to everything. THEN we could just get entertainment out of the AI engine recreating 10+ years of circular forum chatter without any of it being a direct attack against anyone.

Work smarter, not harder

@reimesu for the record, I legitimately empathize with the situation Gany got put in and think it downright sucks they had to choose between their conscience and appeasing the demands of the people who thought they had them in their pocket.

If anyone is interested in these concepts, but prefers the concepts to be explained in a more digestible or less "religiousy/vague" format, check this book out

The Dharma of Star Wars https://a.co/d/fdDD5zc

Concepts like "Anakin's attachment to Padme became a source of negativity to him, and in his aversion to her dying (which everyone does) caused damage to himself and others." Help puts things in perspective for the nerdier mind.

@Bessarion In Buddhism there is a concept of "attachments and aversions", and the only way to achieve peace is to understand them. I generally think this concept could be good for everyone, but particularly the MU community.

Like all things in life, attachments can seem negative and aversions positive, right? Not exactly. An attachment (a thing you love or feel you NEED) can be enjoyable or a source of negativity based on the attachment to the thing you feel you need. Aversion can be healthy (probably best to avoid walking past the neo-Nazi rally) but can also become a festering impulse in your life (your NEED to avoid bad days has made it near impossible to enjoy ANY day).

A while back I realized that being on the games had become a sort of attachment/aversion minefield for me. I loved the writing and some people, but ultimately the drama felt unavoidable, the Hog Pit was exactly the kind of "attachment" to something negative that I felt made positivity near-impossible, and I simply wasn't happy. I couldn't MAKE myself happy enjoying my ATTACHMENT because my AVERSIONS were so under my skin. So I quit playing under the belief I still hold today, which is that there is simply too much difficulty in the games/community that it would likely never be the kind of relaxation I am seeking. Sure, I had ups and downs with communicating with people here (it's natural) but ultimately think that the split in the forums presented what could be a positive opportunity.

Ultimately, the people who dislike me on BMD did themselves a favor by creating a place where I do not exist, and I, in turn, return that favor by not disrupting their space. It feels mutually beneficial and healthy, but (attachments and aversions, again) peace will never be achieved so long as those attach/avers are still in play at either forum.

So I think the more people think about this concept the more they'll find happiness. Hope it helps someone.

@Bessarion said in Ruiz:

One of the big problems with our community is that we have opted for identifiability with handles, but still operate with a Web 1.0 culture of anonymity when it comes to our actual identities.

I fucking LOVE that you said that. Thank you. Maybe you understand then the little joke in my head that came with choosing "Ghost" as a handle and the reason why every now and then I make jokes like "I quit playing MUs...OR DID I?"

There are both positives and negatives with solidifying histories and identities, and pos/negs with reinforcing anonymity. The trick is understanding that for some the anonymity protects them from bullying, where for others the lack of anonymity has now created potentially decades of identifiable harm and bitterness.

The people I like in the community are equally "strangers" to me as the people I don't. There's a probability that some of my least favorite people in the hobby could be a great friend in RL, were it not for the lens of the community's drama and the inevitable dysfunction and lack of empathy that comes from text-based communication.

@Bessarion I'll throw my hat in with that concept. That's got my vote. A little chill and reflection does people good.