Best posts made by Ghost

I'm gonna step in with "Oh come the fuck on, really?" voice, but before I so so, I want to make it clear this isn't an attack, nor am I trying to shame anybody. Please read this like Tarantino over beers. If you actually knew me, you'd get my language. But...

Oh come the fuck on, really?

When you're a staffer, you may have your favorites, but you've got to remain mostly impartial when it comes to keeping the game going. Sure, some people might be way more boring than others, but they're all coming yo your game for fun. For all you know they LOVE your game, are ESL, have trouble getting out of their shell, and your game might help them.

There's nothing wrong with thinking someone is boring, but in all fairness when it comes to the myriad of creepers, snobby assholes, and people who try to cheat the system, I'm suggesting that no one ever suggests nixing boring people who are nice people.

Maybe this is better at the absolutism thread, but over the last decade I've heard a lot of "this guy is boring" and "I hate how this person poses" and "they say YOU instead of HER". I, myself, was guilty of avoiding people who didn't meet some invisible bar I'd set for what was considered good writing, but I think many of us do/have done this.

What ever happened to "Hey <insert name of boring player>, I had an idea to make this RP more exciting, are you interested?" or "Hosting an OOC event on how to write or make interesting poses"?

I just...feel on a human level that there's so much quick judgment about players that we have often forgotten that we might actually be able go build each other up instead of break each other down, or at the very least be more welcoming to boring players because maybe with some effort they could be really great, or great friends, or decent code people.

I know it wasn't what was said (or said as an actual suggestion), but my empathy brain read "boring people deserve staff time less than exciting people, so should we ask boring people to leave?" and some part of me thought: "Fuck, that is one thing that is SO wrong about some people in this hobby: its either ON or OFF, YES or NO, COOL or SHIT, and it seems that it's just rare to hear: how can we support these people, especially if they're NICE people?"

Back before I hung up the hobby, I outright roleplayed with people I had bad OOC history/communication with because I realized that everyone is coming to these games for the same reason: to be creative. I don't have to be everyone's bestie to do that, but I can be supportive of the effort as a whole and if someone and I don't get along great Oocly? That's fine. We can still do stories and keep the pages to a minimum.

Anyway.

I don't mean to derail from the OP's topic, but this just kinda struck a nerve in me and I wanted to type it out before I lost it. I don't mean to get all Hippie about it, but fuuuuuuuuck, yanno? So much breaking people down, and not enough building people up.

I hope one day to see this. I really do.

@Auspice said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:

Austin has no magic shop that I can find.
And I don't mean M:tG. I mean 'place I can go to buy silly magic trick gimmicks because I'm a dork who likes them sometimes.'

This reads like a Mage character's background.

"She loved magic, but after looking high and low for a store that sold tricks and tools of prestidigitation to no avail, she noticed a door that she couldn't quite remember having ever been there before..."

I'm gonna weigh in since I'm apparently Mr Opinion tonight in the StaffNPC thread.

I thiiiiink... (Metaphor time)

...If I walked into a club in high school and saw a room this divided, I'd back out.

Sally won't play with Fred because he's a psycho. Bill told a lie about having an extra ticket to a movie in sophomore year so Jake refuses to play chess with him. These people over here believe they do it right and everyone else is a fucking idiot. Everyone else feels they do it right and those people over there are fucking idiots. If you come to the club and dont behave one way then these 4 people won't talk to you ever again, but if you role play their way, another 4 people won't talk to you ever again, either.

I think recognizing the problem is the first step.

And I think that problem is identifying the fact that many of you simply don't like each other as much as you pretend to, and that years of infighting and bad memories with each other have made for one large, dysfunctional family.

I think that this MILDLY CONSTRUCTIVE board should be the anti-Hog Pit. Use it to build each other up and find your common ground again. For fuck's sake LAY OFF THE HOG PIT SO MUCH; it's only driving divisive wedges and aiding in this neverending melodrama of who's in this season and who's out.

What was it, 3 or 4 years ago? I called someone a cunt here and it snapped in me that this isn't who I am. So I just...stopped calling people names and am doing my best to not be cruel. We may disagree, you may not like my wording or ideas, but I will not be cruel. You may not like me, we may not always be in sync, but I want people to rely on me to not be mean, to be willing to listen to new ideas, and give them the benefit of the doubt that I don't have any fucking clue who they actually are as people, but whoever that is deserves a chance.

Even @Kanye-Qwest ...who I argue with but refuse to be cruel to, because I just don't want that anymore.

People talk a lot about blacklisting people, and other people live in fear of being blacklisted from games. Games and groups of players become secular. The people who try to be so inviting often struggle against near constant ooc issues to moderate at staff, mostly because people fight, sometimes over petty differences.

For many of you, this group is five to seven hours, five to seven days a week. Some of you talk to each other more than coworkers, and some of you talk to each other more than family.

If you guys want your hobby to be something awesome, then you have got to make a concerted effort to identify where you may be damaging others, and how you can find common ground to untangle the mess of cords behind the television.

If you don't actively start talking to each other with building something better in mind, then this hobby is always going to be a constant train of "I love it, but they're ruining it for me, so fuck them" from both sides of the room.

So, seriously, this mutually assured destruction stuff is actually making the hobby harder for you all. I dont know what the absolute answer is, but I have buried the hatchet with some people I had some major issues with and things are going well. It feels good. Maybe it's time to work on that, and working out how to start communicating with each other.

I want pho.

That is all.

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

I lost access to that wonderful community because I was dumb and it's been made clear that they will never ever forgive me.

This is a horrible thing to feel.

I also think you're not alone, and that many mushers either feel that way or live in fear of feeling that way because they know just how tenuous reputations can be and just how much character assassination catches on. It's shockingly easy to spread a lie, and shockingly difficult to prove that you're a good person to people you've never even talked to in an OOC sense.

Have you considered getting out of the OOC game, going the anonymity route, and just roleplaying without the stigma of you being you?

FWIW most of Lovecraft's works are now public domain. What remains is a little gray area such as Chaosium holding a trademark for "Call of Cthulhu" and some other phrases.

So to my knowledge not only can you reproduce your own HP Lovecraft content unchecked (up to and including releasing and re-selling his pre 1923 work without much fear of legal repercussion), but also the man has been dead since 1937 and is unable to benefit from the sales of derivative cash streams related to his creations.

Whatever your opinions are of his xenophobic undertones, the majority of his work that is appreciated remains to be about underwater psychic fish people cults, underground madness-inducing blobby polyps, Antarctic bug people, and the like. Most people are unaware, don't care, or simply don't produce his old poetry about race and overt human-level xenophobia.

My point is that while Lovecraft himself as a person is definitely a topic, Volkwagen delivered 11 million or so vehicles in 2019, and the VW product itself is no longer really associated with its origin during the 3rd Reich anymore than the vast majority of people reading about the Cthulhu mythos to do out of support of Lovecraft's racism.

So, in IT my crew and I often use what we call the "shooting gallery" method, which is: "If you can shoot every last bullet you can think of at it and nothing dents it, then the idea AS YOU KNOW IT is sound". Kind of a scientific method thing where you try to break your theory to test if it's a decent theory.

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.

Here is how the X-card gets a bullet shot in it:

Say you're a tabletop (convention, house game, OTT, even Mush) GM who had written an adventure surrounding a murder investigation.

X-card gets pressed on the word 'murder'

Now...the entire session focused on solving a murder is:

• Not supposed to hash out the details
• is expected to immediately detour, no questions asked
• The topic of said murder (and investigating it) is core to all of the effort the GM put into the session
• The X-card presser expects to not be asked to leave
• The GM has....nofuckingclue what to do

Changeling: The Lost is essentially about kidnapped children who are abused by alien-minded entities.

X-Card on 'kidnap' or mention of Gentry

That's...gonna be rough

Zombie game with high mortality rate and depictions of dead people...

X-card on PC death and descriptions of dead bodies

I could go on, but so long as the expectation is that there are no questions asked and that the table needs to accommodate for said X-card presser's wishes, there's no good way to navigate the pressing of that damn card if they press it on something impassable. If "no questions asked" and "cant ask player to leave" is non-negotiable, then it presents an impasse that "proper adult communication skills" is not subject to.

There is no good "game design" method (other than excluding the player from the game) that exists for "what to do if the player doesn't want to play your story, but still wants to play the game."

@Auspice said in Bad TV:

Supernatural should have ended where it was written to end. Season 5. They wrapped up the story nice and neat. Then it became the dead horse that kept being beaten for views.

I gotta give it to the cast, though. Good on them for making good money across 15+ years on a show that I'm sure they're well aware is repetitive and tropey. You git that money, boys.

From what it looks like there are characters there under the age of 18.

So I guess it's cool if you're into that.
(disclaimer: this is sarcasm. I don't think it's cool to be into that.)

I will never doubt humanity's current ability to find new cultural niches to explore, many of them I can't feel are created on purpose and there's a lot of sudden awareness campaigns to rush rush rush to convince people it's all normal and cool.

But just because someone says something is healthy for them doesn't mean it is. It's a little concerning just how much people are receding from each other to connect on a human level, IMO. This practice of creating niche societies that exclude others, surround yourself with people with the same world view, fighting back and forth against a society of people who don't understand the lifestyle decisions you've made because to them it's weird, or closely related to what they know of mental illness?

When I write a character, I try to make sure the dialogue and action comes through the voice of the character I have in mind, but I don't actually will the character into quasi-existence. I never lose sight of the character being fictional and the moment I start t behave as if I'm giving a fictional character sway over my RL decisions is the moment you all need to tell me to walk away from this hobby.

@Misadventure said in Cyberrun:

And why doesn't Pris skeeve people? She's a 4 year old in an adult body, slated to be a sex worker.

Misleading.

Pris was a artificial being with an adult personality and an adult appearance that was designed to be a pleasure model that came off of the assembly line four years ago.

The human growth and development process and concept of having to evolve from child to adult never applied to Pris.

When Blade Runner released, Daryl Hannah was 22.

@Lotherio said in Getting Young Blood Into MU*'ing:

@Ghost said in Getting Young Blood Into MU*'ing:

Every few months or so I get really loud and shake my cane in the air

Only every few months? ... oh oh, just on this topic, gotcha.

I kind of rotate. I have a circle of life of topics; I'm aware lol.

In my defense, though, I think if you spend enough time on MSB you see various cycles.

Edit: It's like...(roll a d20)

1 Social Dice?
2 Creepers
3 Where in the world is Spider San Diego?
4 The Clique
5 Metagaming
6 Community social issues
8-15 Argue with someone you disagree with until they are dust.
16 Pedophilia on games? Let them do their thing or Kill It With Fire?
17-19 Completely misunderstand some shit but respond with venom, then reroll.
20 People who are cool.

I will also let you sleep with my SO for +300XP at chargen on the next MU you make.

because I am classy.

When I first got into the hobby, I would browse games on Mudconnector. As a new player I didn't give a shit if a game was a MUCK, MUD, MUSH, MOO, etc. I was purely in "I don't care what the nerds call their site. I want to play an RPG.*" mode.

And, honestly, after spending more years in the hobby than I care to count, I still really don't care about the difference between a MOO and a MUCK. I'm willing to bet, though, that the negative social BS on any Mx game similar.

@mietze said in Forum Factions:

12 year old boy sense of humor faction? Though to be fair, I make more fart jokes on faction channels or pub than I do here. ;). Maybe immature humor faction would be better cause I can't really pass up a menstrual joke either, really.

What did the pirate say when he turned 80?

AYYYYYYYY MATEY

@Auspice said in The ethics of IC romance, TS, etc:

And for all that he talks a big game now, he got anxious back then. But we're talking something that was 7 years ago so y'know what? I 100% believe he's changed and grown and gone through shit since then (I know I have!). But back then I'd totally get anxious, uncertain pages some days of 'Hey, is everything okay? She's not leaving him, is she?' They never felt CLINGY or NEEDY or like OOC BOUNDARIES were crossed, but more like weather checks. And he might feel called out right now (sorry boo), but I share this because I never felt bad responding to them.

Hah, nah I dont feel called out. IIRC you were cool with being cautious and TBH IIRC my motivation for asking whether or not your game plan for the character sticking on the train with my PC was more related to whether or not I should have been hunting down other RP or avoiding kicking things off that would have cut off that avenue. I have a bad track record for making IC choices resulting in OOC heat that by that point I'd learned to be more cautious.

Either way, if your character wants to fuck around? Cool. It ain't my dick. All I really care about is that the story keeps going, even if it's ICly "omfg I hate you for reverse cowgirl with my neighbor".

I make characters who aren't me and try to let them be who they are, so its the inability to ICly be flawed, messy, and conflicting without it being taken on some animism level that I am that person that gets me.

We had some good times. Success story. High five. Zero RL tension. Hooray for writing fucking stories.

@surreality said in RL Anger:

WHY THE HELL ARE YOU HERE I PLANNED TO LICK MYSELF TO MAURY TODAY

Answer?

BECAUSE I AM WHERE I PLAN TO LICK MYSELF TO MAURY TODAY.

@Auspice A lot of that success, i think, is attributed to the fact that it remained IC. All we really wanted was to be relevant in story and just being cool with each other about it. When you said "I think she's gonna cheat" I was like:

And the more you know the other person isn't hanging on so tightly to things being a certain way, the more comfortable it is. I felt that had I said "I'm gonna do this other thing for a bit" that you would have said:

...Without attacking me through OOC bullshit, whispers, etc.

Why? Because it wasnt an OOC relationship. The more you acknowledge that it's just about story and hanging out, the more it's actually writing a story. You were free to RP where you felt the story took you and I figured either way I'd find RP elsewhere.

I've seen a lot of OOC angst and feelings involving IC relationships and the more I saw it, the more I wanted to avoid RP with certain people (and as @Derp has mentioned, regular accusation scandal players).

The tighter you grip, the less oxygen there is.

Edit: So I maintain my "line in the sand" stance. WRITERS get disappointed and just want it to be a part of the story. ONLINE DATING gets angry and turns it into public, loud, jilted drama.

@Macha Good on you! When I took my break (or HAVE I? I could be anywhere, anytime mwuahah) it really made it clear to me how much time I sunk into Mu. I really did the math on some of it, and it went like this.

• Let's say I get on after work (5p) and MU until bedtime (12a). That's 7 hours.
• Ignore that it was probably 1-2 hours of waiting for a scene to start and 1-2 poses per hour, so I was averaging: 10 poses a night, roughly 4 sentences per pose so 4 sentences per hour...and if the scene was big enough it was maybe 1 pose every 1.5-2 hours (or less depending on how quirkyperfectomg the other people in the scene were)

What can 7 hours a day buy you?

• Watching almost the entirety of Amazon's RINGS OF POWER daily
• if every wrestlemania averages 3-4 hours, then in 10 days you can watch every Wrestlemania ever to completion, but you can sit through 2 wrestlemanias in the time it took you to write 10 poses.
• if just one of those hours was dedicated to an exercise regimen, you'd STILL have enough time for that, 1 episode of RoP, and 1 wrestlemania with sexy abs.
• There are 92 NASCAR races a year, each averaging about 3 hours per race. So if you watch 2 races per night in 46 days you will have watched an entire Nascar season. This includes 36 cup series races, 33 Xfinity, and 22 cup. However if you just wanna watch the cup races you could get through an entire season in a little over 3 weeks.

So I hear you. When I took that time off it was like...

...but these days I mostly just fuck around sneaking onto games run by people who don't like me.