@hobos Yeah I just don't think it's productive to call someone a phony, throw out the word fascist, and then accuse a poster of possibly being someone like Cullen incognito trying to use the discussion as a way to clear the case about them. It's not helpful.
Best posts made by Ghost
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RE: What Would it Take to Repair the Community?
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RE: Bad Actors, and Bad Behavior (extended)
One of the major problems in this hobby is that without the existence of logs, bad behavior is a matter entirely of hearsay that makes it hard to truly understand what's really going on. Over my tenure in the hobby I've seen some really openly bad behavior (Stalking, threats, doxxing, abuse to name a few), but more times than not I'm approached with rumors of these behaviors without evidence.
I'm going to say up front my answer, and then explain why.
My answer? YOU CAN'T, NOT WITHOUT LOGS
This is a text-based hobby, where there isn't any explanation as to why logs can't be presented. This extends even to Discord or any other outside-of-game chats. Sure, they can be falsified and edited, but in theory the person being accused could also present their own logs as evidence of edit. But the one thing that remains true is that you can't deny the existence of logs as a good focal point on determining whether or not bad behavior has happened at all.
Now for the part that some people might not agree with me on, but I feel very, very strongly about this.
- I've been on games where jilted players have used threats of badmouthing the game to fuck them over as a means to get back at the game for upsetting them (where do you think they intend to do this?)
- I've been party to some fairly excessive claims, without logs, that I later found out the other side of the story was a completely different take.
- We just had a thread show up on the Hog Pit where one player caused a stampede on another game on a theory that a player was OPP.
Like it or not, this isn't an environment where things happened exactly as a person claimed that they did because they say it's true. There are people who leverage their reputation over logs, and there are people who know that character assassination on a private, page-level campaign without the existence of logs can do absolute damage to a player or game that they aren't happy with...and it happens. We all know it happens, and it happens more than I think we pay attention to.
So my advice on this thread going forward is to understand that over the history of this hobby there have been some absolute people who deserved the title of "problem players", but there have also been some rather unfortunate victims of aggressive behavior from players who have somehow managed to avoid getting onto that list of problem players (due to cliques, popularity, ownership of games, etc).
How do I personally deal with problem players? I used to get annoyed or upset about it, but nowadays? I don't.
For me, it's simple. If someone does something rude to me on this text-based media, I can log it and forward it to staff. There's no reason to wrestle and there's no reason to lose my cool. I'll forward it to staff as a complaint, sever OOC communication with the player, and if I find myself on a game where staff isn't handling complaints about logged abusive player behavior? I leave the game. Ultimately, if this results in me having zero games to play? I do something else with my time, because at that point I'll have more fun away from MU than with it.
But we should be very, very, very careful to not create an environment where cult of personality results in logless courts of public opinion, and I feel that there should be more awareness and action taken against people who use the sideways means to attack other players.
So, there are problem players (Stalking, Doxxing, Abuse, etc) and there are players who use logless whisper campaigns of such to attack other players who have upset them. There's a difference.
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RE: Faceless' Playlist
@Paris I'll have to look from home. No way in hell am I gonna risk getting caught googling "prurient perfume" for the purposes of making a character who secretes lube, from my phone, from work.
Fuck it'd be less embarrassing if I got caught looking at porn.
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RE: What Would it Take to Repair the Community?
@Arkandel said in What Would it Take to Repair the Community?:
However what concerns me here, and I'll be honest, is that you don't seem to think the plan went wrong.
As opposed to what about removing the Hog Pit and instituting an anti-attack policy that they thought might have gone right?
I think there's a huge difference between "changing things and accepting the results, even if a number of people don't like it" and "changing things and it being the wrong decision", which I think ultimately is what some people are trying to browbeat the MSB staff into admitting: "We fucked up".
I don't think the staff at MSB are "refusing to admit the plan went wrong" at all. I think the staff at MSB are refusing to adhere to the opinions of a select number of angry people who want to see them admit to being wrong.
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RE: Forgiveness in Mushing
I think you'll find that mushers who aren't so concerned about the social currency side-game of mushing aren't easily "hurt" by disagreements/miscommunication, and usually approach the concept of forgiveness/conflict resolution like normal human beings.
Staff doesn't care about their players at all (translation: I am upset about staff not agreeing with me on an issue and am plying the social currency side-game on MSB to achieve vindication).
There is only so much actual fucked up stalking/abuse/maybe even legal damage that happens on these games. The rest is all subjective, and for some, amplified to questionably rational degrees.
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RE: The All-New Down With OPP Thread
@hobos said in The All-New Down With OPP Thread:
If a man plays a female character and notices how grossly people act towards women, that's personal growth through roleplay.
I've said it before on this site and I'll say it again. I am a male who doesn't consider writing female characters to be crossplaying but an exercise in becoming a better writer.
My experiences RPing a female character without declaring up-front that I was a male writer were eye opening in terms of what kind of pressure and harassment some women (or players believed to be women) get on these games, and it really helped define the way I treated others regardless of which gender I perceived them to be.
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RE: The Pack Discussion
@Macha I just question that "crap talked people", "contributed to the MSB/BMD split", "has minions", and "has been accused of being toxic" are a qualified list of offenses on a forum full of people crap talking others with their minions, who have been accused of being toxic, who were also part of the MSB/BMD split...makes any sense at all.
That's kind of like Kool-Ade accusing Tang of being a powdered flavor-drink.
Also, I prefer Dark World to Ragnarok.
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RE: Ruiz
@Bessarion FYI they don't have to stop anything for you to stop giving then attention. You could, at any time, muster up the self control and stop responding.
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RE: Historical MUSHes
@faraday said in Historical MUSHes:
@A-Meowley said in Historical MUSHes:
@surreality said in Historical MUSHes:
I think it would be ridiculous to say that staff allows what I've described because of an inherent desire to be sexist/racist/ableist/homophobic/etc. RL.
Good thing nobody's said that!
Except that they have. Just not in this particular thread.
Wow. Totally forgot about that thread.
The way I see it is this: You can't have it both ways.
If you have a historical mush without also incorporating both the negatives and positives of the era, then it's really not historical but more a period-piece with adapted/selected themes.
But if you role play an idealized version of a specific era (I.e. a good example is the movie Overlord, which had Bokeem Woodbine playing a black NCO over white troops in the invasion of Normandy, which never happened historically), you can still enjoy the game, but it's technically not historically accurate.
Sure, some covert assholes are gonna be like "Hey I wanna drop n-bombs (not because I'm racist but because it's HISTORICALLY ACCURATE AND THIS IS THE LACK OF HISTORIC ACCURACY I ZERO IN ON)", but implementing modern themes for OOC comfort to avoid negativity TECHNICALLY detracts from the purpose of roleplaying out a historical era.
I guess philosophy-wise, the whole point of history (or revisiting it in fiction) is to acknowledge the good and bad of the era and to write a story that is fictitious but could have happened in the era. Doing so allows us to revisit the setting and use the negativity of the era as a constant antagonist to the protagonist.
In short: Adrian Brody in THE PIANIST would mean little without the theme of racist, fascist Nazis sacking Poland.
I can see both sides of the argument. My preference would be to actually bind to actual historic accuracy but mandate the themes of expected PCs and leave the racism/bigotry to NPCs/enemies controlled by staff who will do so with dignity.
ETA: You can RP a game in an era where people owned slaves or women had no right to vote, but you keep the game manageable by simply requiring that all PCs are not those who believe in said bigotry. They could want to abstain from the topic, outright DISLIKE the bigotry, or ignore it altogether and focus on other themes, but never be a proponent of.
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RE: Ruiz
And yet you are basically slut shaming me, calling me a creeper and worse, for a log that didn't have any TS in it.
This is an entirely fair statement.
If we can all agree that slut-shaming is wrong, then taking 3rd party details of a scene between two consenting writers and releasing log, personal details on who the player is, and kicking off a campaign to label them as a sexual predator...is slut shaming.
And may I say if there are levels of slut shaming ranging from 1 to 10, taking a romance/intense scene log and turning into a sexual predator campaign lands somewhere between "9" and "I asked Danny Masterson to tweet a link to it."
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RE: MU Things I Love
Taking the "parent character" thing here.
How fucking LULz would it be if there was a character who was a new dad and was tired all of the time, but during some kind of vampire hunt it led to a strip club. The hunters want to go in and pose as customers to find the vampires.
"No. No. OOOOH no. The last time I did this I had to sleep on my couch for a month. Do you have any fucking clue what it's like to live on a couch for a month? I couldn't even explain to her that the glitter was from a fucking vampire. She made me go with her and the baby to swim lessons for a one year old. Does that even fucking make sense? Swimming at one?!? Man...I dunno."
Phone rings...
"See?! It's her. She knows things. Now she's asking me to pick up formula. I have a fucking shotgun on my back with shells that shoot fucking fire and I'm getting texts to pick up baby formula and Wiggles videos. Guys...I love you but I think I'm done. Done. Gotta retire."
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RE: Whatever Happened To Star Wars MU*s?
@Joyeuse Star Wars has a bit of an "up and down" reputation with Mushers.
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SYSTEM: There have been multiple attempts using the West-End Games d6 system (low complication, but pretty rigid when it comes to force users), the d20 edition (D20, Saga, both were like D&D: level-based, lots of stat blocks, lots of code to support it, but definitely WALLS of +5 to this, +7 to that, +2 if you're within 5 feet of another...), and the new Fantasy-Flight system (low complexity, but using a dice system most games aren't currently designed to handle. Will take effort to port it over). In the end...the fan favorite seems to be the D6 WEG system.
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The Dreaded Force-Slot Debacles: For years (probably from about mid 1990s-2008) the D6 WEG games were the only Star Wars games, and it seemed the same issue with Feature Characters (Han, Luke, Leia...) and Force Users (as in, users ALLOWED to have the Force) happened at every game: There were a limited number of allowed FCs and FUs, and everyone else had to have a normal-type character. In many cases, FC/FUs were slotted to staff members or friends of staff, and because they were special characters a lot of the good plots and great things were built around that higher caste of characters. There were rules on each game as to how active FC/FU characters were supposed to be, but rarely enforced. Often, when one would open up there would be this weird "Hunger Games" display of "taking applications" for Force User slots, which would STILL often go to staff or friends of staff.
So, some players have a bit of fatigue from dealing with #2. Sure, there was fun to be found, but it was very hard to simply play what you wanted to play.
- Divided Playerbase: Some people want BIG UNIVERSE with MANY FACTIONS, and others seem to want ONE PLANET with LESS FACTIONS. There seems to be no general consensus as to what makes a Star Wars game work. Some have tried and people have cited not playing because the game was in too small of a setting without many factions. For some it's WHO staffs the game. For others its WHICH system is used. For some, the moment FC/FU slots get mentioned they're out (I would probably be one of those, because that feeling of waiting and being rejected just to play a character concept you have in mind suuuuucks).
Sidebar: Not long ago were some D20 Saga Edition games where the guy running the game would constantly berate the playerbase, calling them stupid, etc. I quit 2 of them within a day after watching the head staffer bitch people out for not being smart enough to listen to him. This staffer, who is a bit infamous, was also taking side money from people over paypal for stuff like "buying levels" or "purchasing rare equipment".
- Repeated Playerbase Habits: This may not be a popular opinion, but I think it's relevant. Star Wars, World of Darkness, and Battlestar Galactica have revolving-door players. By this I mean that if you go onto a Battlestar Galactica game, you'll probably come across players who were on the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh etc Battlestar Game that has come and gone. With enough time in the hobby you may notice that players and/or characters tend to repeat things from game to game. I don't think this is KEEPING anyone from making a new Star Wars game, but I think most elder-type players will expect things like this:
Example:
Steve played "Chad Starshooter" on four different iterations of Star Wars games. When a new one comes out, he may want to play "Chad Starshooter" again. If not allowed to, he may make "Bill Sunblaster", who maybe uses a different PB, but is the same character in essence. Ellen, who played "Tiffany Darkside" on those previous games was a girlfriend to "Chad Starshooter". She will then play "Debbie Shadowside" and be with "Bill Sunblaster".Also an example:
Dave ran Star Wars games 1-3. On the 2nd, he disagreed with some player resulting in an OOC spat. The 3rd consisted of players who either sided with him in the spat or people who didn't care. The 4th Star Wars game after Dave's was a "refuguee game" of players/staff that said "FUCK DAVE" and made the new Mecca of Star Wars Mushing. Eventually, the players of that 4th game splintered, some went back to Dave's game. Some just moved on. POINT: A NEW Star Wars game will likely involve the players of Dave's 1-3 game and the 4th game, and will likely bring old baggage based on who is staff and who plays who into the game, resulting in a number of players passing based on who is there or chosen as staff.Also another example:
I've also seen some players who had issues on, say, one Star Wars game in 2004 get back into Star Wars in, say, 2019 (theoretically) and come back with those same issues. This is kinda like the above example, but more like "I put up with this shit on "Dave's" game in 2004 and am super on alert for it in 2019, so many of the same complaints to staff and whatnot can get repeated or handed down from game to game.I'm not without my preferences. I think the best there was (despite force user slots) was some of the EPIC starfighter stuff I got into on SW1 eons ago (shit, when was that? closed in 2003? fuuuuuuckme #old). I'd consider coming back for some RP for a few games, one of them being a proper faction/galaxy-spanning Star Wars game that allowed for playing force users right out of character generations. I think it might do well if people gave it a clean slate chance.
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RE: MU Things I Love
New Game Idea:
(drum roll)
WET HOT AMERICAN SUMMER: THE MUSH
A game about the lives, trials, and tribulations of hardcore 1980's camp counselor tropes with all PBs in their 30s and 40s.
Will they discover the lost hermit rocker in the woods before the rich kids from across the lake unwittingly cause the destruction of the camp by nuclear fire?
Will a 20 year old Ted (PB: Clive Owen) succeed at saving the camp by keeping his crown as the camp's reigning fart fight champion?
Will the multiculturally cast group of high school gangbangers sent to camp to avoid probation (PBS: Tracy Morgan, Will Farrell, Betty White, Wes Studi, Ricky Martin, Mako) learn to work together before one of them stabs each other with the SWITCHBLADE HIDDEN IN THE BUNKHOUSE???
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RE: Alien RPG coming soon...
@Auspice said in Alien RPG coming soon...:
You should uh....
....run an OTT.<.<
Only for people who upvote me.
(Edit: This was a cheap joke for getting upvotes. When the time comes I'll totally ask for PMs)
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RE: Difference between an NPC and a Staff PC?
I might try to put an end to the "IC Relationship with NPC" argument, here.
Here we go.
I think that a player character (key word) having a relationship with a staff-run NPC is absolutely fine so long as the following requirements are met.
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Players must submit a +job to staff to arrange scenes with NPC. Must state purpose of scene and if they want TS
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Staff may assign whichever GM is available at the time to role play as the NPC. The player does not get to choose who roleplays as their "NPC lover", as all GMs have the same expectations of fairness. Theyre all deputized.
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Head Staff are comfortable telling their GMs that they may be required to TS with people as a means of +job fulfillment.
Otherwise...itsafuckingPC.
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RE: Difference between an NPC and a Staff PC?
@Sunny said in Difference between an NPC and a Staff PC?:
@krmbm said in Difference between an NPC and a Staff PC?:
@Sunny said in Difference between an NPC and a Staff PC?:
The? No. It shows that it is A way to get story.
That's your opinion as a person that thinks inter-personal RP via staff NPCs is fine.
Mine (as someone who does not think it's fine) is that I just saw Sue get a cool new weapon because she went 18-holes with StafferBob, and I did not get anything because I don't enjoy that particular flavor of RP and didn't jump on StafferBob's putter.
I may be completely wrong and pettily jealous, but now I'm completely wrong and jealous over here, on a game where I'm more comfortable with how staff uses their NPCs.
Why is this being presented as if it's a problem? If someone is going to be completely wrong and pettily jealous -- and behave in accordance with those feelings -- I don't want them on my game anyway, so it sounds to ME like in this scenario, literally everyone is winning.
Just wanting to understand, so I'm asking to clarify.
Are you saying that if Bob is upset and jealous that Steve got a shiny cool weapon with great stats after 18 sessions of TS with a staffer (and that Bob has not had this opportunity made available to him), that Bob's behavior is petty and that if he is removed from the game everyone wins?
If that is what you are saying, then I disagree.
ETA: Realistically, I get that me working 365 a year to afford a sports car is the slow standard, but if some 20 year old dude fucks a cougar and gets gifted a Ferrari for it, I'm still gonna be like: "Yeah, fuck those guys".
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RE: Visit Fallcoast, sponsored by the Fallcoast Chamber of Commerce
Not to be a dissenting voice here, but TBH I think the upper NE United States and the general New England setting as a whole is pretty played the fuck out.
I can't say that if the change were in my hands that I wouldn't have gone with a new locale myself.