Best posts made by Ghost

@surreality said in Emotional separation from fictional content:

Re: @Ghost, I similar do not consider this to be 'catering to someone's disease', I consider it to be demonstrating respect for fellow participants on a game and allowing them to make decisions for themselves about their participation.

@faraday nailed my emotional feel of it personally by saying that it must be horrible to have to nitpick forms of entertainment based on anxieties. That can't be fun.

Personally? I stopped watching The Walking Dead after the Negan finale because I decided that it didn't make me feel good. I chose to stop watching for my own health, rather than watch and get mad at the script for making me feel bad.

You wrote:

I consider it to be demonstrating respect for fellow participants on a game and allowing them to make decisions for themselves about their participation.

However, my counterpoint to that sentiment is this:

On online games with mature themes (troubled relationship to, horror, violence, etc), when a player triggered by these very themes chooses to join, despite, the other players do not get the option of deciding whether or not they are participant to said player's difficulty with emotional investment and/or triggering. It becomes their problem, like it or not. On a respect level, they didn't ask to be made to feel guilty for someone's OOC RL triggers.

There has GOT to be a responsibility placed on behalf of the sensitive player to understand that they chose this arena. These people, these strangers, are a constant x-factor on a playspace that the player has already identified as having themes that trigger them. I sympathize and many others do as well, but at the end of the day, it is my responsibility as a player to behave reasonably on a game with mature themes without forcing my RL issues on other players, too. They came for the game and accepted the themes involved.

If someone is playing with a toy box of things that trigger me, or knock me off of my emotional equilibrium, and I decide to go and play with them with things that tend to make me feel that way, it is not their fault when I end up distraught.

I chose that toy box.

It's wholly reasonable for that other kid playing with the toy box to not be reaponsible for my reaction in that scenario.

Just ask @auspice. I only eat her tube steak.

#goldcardstr8

Yanno. I think I've gotten my point across and I heart @surreality to pieces. So I'm gonna do something here.

I'm going to say " @Thenomain , @faraday, and @Arkandel tend to be more eloquent and less blue-collar offensive in delivery than myself. Some of them are extrapolating on points that I agree with, so I'm gonna step back and let their views keep things civil while avoiding my delivery causing issues or misconceptions."

I respect people as individuals and people with personal stuff. We've all got it, myself included.

I'll chime in later if the dialogue results in something that wouldn't be me repeating myself.

DOUBLE POST

Here's the kind of material that actually comes across like a true story to other IT people (actual true story):

So my company had a tier 2 data center where their main power supply failed due to a storm. One of the data center techs miswired the backup UPS to the data center, so when the data tried to fail over to the secondary power supply, it failed. Turns out the guy plugged the backup cabling into the primary instead of the backup. SO...we had this huge network outage, everyone's hair was on fire, and when they go into the data center to fix the problem...the doors were locked.

The doors had an electronic thumbprint security system that was running off of the data center's power supply, so they were locked out. Their shitty cabling setup locked them out from getting INTO the data center to route power to the secondary.

Around that time, the Group Executive (boss's boss's boss's boss) announces on a conference call that he's going to take off his suit and tie, roll up his sleeves, and go down there and fix the problem with his team. The Executive was a SUIT, had zero skills, but those poor bastards had to work with a boss three levels above them directing traffic and cracking the whip. Awkward.

True story.

I can tell that to other IT people and they will not only know I'm not full of shit, but that I actually work in IT

Staff should make a reasonable attempt to provide rules and preview of the themes included in the game. They should make a reasonable attempt to create a safe playspace, and give players enough details on the content to provide the players with the information required to determine whether or not they want to opt out before becoming too invested in the game.

The majority of these games are come to for role-playing the dramatic; Improv drama theater, in a sense. They are not safe spaces to work emotional issues out or test life alongside triggers. The staff and players do not qualify as therapists or a representative population that can assist someone with a lack of emotional separation.

In short, the people who come to these games, come for the IC drama, the danger, the plot twists, the horror, the darkness, the sex, the loss, the story. Asking them to place the responsibility upon the game and player base to cater with utmost care for those choosing to enter the funhouse despite their lack of OOC emotional separation to the themes, is kind of like asking strangers to provide a heroin addict for a safe space to do heroin, but to keep an eye on them and make sure they don't OD from it.

It's uncomfortable. It's dangerous.

The concept that one's IC interactions could be deciding very real OOC mental and emotional health issues is heartbreaking.

Which is why I think there's nothing wrong with staff creating a policy that states that if staff decide by consensus that a player's mental and emotional health is being affected by the game, then requesting the player take a break or freeze their character until their objectivity returns is wholly acceptable.

That's reasonable to me.

Edit/note: And I know there are those of us out there, the medicated and objective, who have our own emotional issues and diagnoses, who do just fine on these games. We weigh our own level of involvement and attachment, deal with our psych/emotional issues on our own terms, and maybe ninja-style test run concepts through our characters. This statement doesn't apply to the people who control their levels of emotional distance. This comment is for the ones who cannot.

Being a Waterfall-based Config Mgmt/Ops person, I can agree that this is a cause for concern.

My suggestion is to get ahead of the ball and start training on information security certs like SSCP, CISSP, CEH.

The more companies rely on agile/automated methods, the more safeguards will need to be in place to maintain security. The number of operations staff may drop, but the number of security eyes will need to increase. InfoSec is not only on the rise, but but global telecommunication environment has proven that there will always be good use for an InfoSec person or a certified ethical hacker (CEH)

Edit: because typos

@Arkandel oh yeah, staff is a very mixed bag, and such a policy could also lend to staffside gaslighting. I've seen it happen before, where staff decides someone has lost their objectivity and a player is forced from a game, seemingly, due to emotional issues, yet strangely everyone in the player base knows about it mid-process. Tread lightly.

I agree more proactive measures are needed, which is why I think the +accept process is important. People need to read the MU-style policies and EULA things.

I think the first proactive step is a well-written explanation about reasonable purpose and conflict resolution written as a two-way contract, something like this:

BlahBlahBlahMUX deals in mature themes that may be considered, at times, emotionally impacting to characters and players. We've painted guidelines in our content and behavior policies to provide what we feel is an acceptable and reasonable series of boundaries that will allow for safe, productive role play within the theme and setting.

It is our goal to provide a safe environment and in issues of harassment or abusive behavior outside of these lines, request an open dialogue between staff and players so that we may help the playerbase protect said safe, productive environment.

Because of this, behavior and responsibility on the game is a two-way contract. In joining this game, the acceptance of risk of being emotionally affected by this theme, content, or IC actions of other players, is to be accepted by each player and mitigated in a mature, communicative manner. Players are expected to maintain objectivity and resolve personal and emotional conflicts peacefully. In joining, players are signing a two-way contract to accept the reasonable attempt for a safe playspace with rules and appropriate theme, but the player's end of contract is maintain a separation between OOC and IC, to truly accept the OOC perils of role play in such a theme, and in the event of issues, maintain fairness and objectivity, as well.

It's a game. If the themes and content within are potential triggers that a player cannot emotionally distance themselves from, then BlahBlahBlahMUX kindly requests a reconsideration of joining this game. We care for the mental and emotional health of the individual, but as part of our contract to our players, it is our intention to provide a safe, productive playspace, and that will always include protecting our playerbase from players who have lost their ability to separate IC from OOC.

I dunno. Rambling. Something like this.

I hear ya on those points. Maybe I'm slightly nihilistic about this, but even for the people who want all people to matter, there will always be a leaning towards but I should matter more than that guy.

Even in some kind of true Utopia, with the competitive nature of people, an ER Doctor would never accept some kind of true equality where he makes just as much as a bus boy in a sports bar. So with the everyone gets a trophy or black lives matter or omg white privilege people, I tend to look at it all with a slanted brow.

They're all just people in a competitive society, lobbying to the referees to apply negatives to the people they're competing against to promote positives for themselves. It's socio-political cannibalism and in the fear of not having enough, we're finding new ways to exclude people from the competition pool all of the time.

I kind of feel like a color-coded list of what is Amber level sexual content versus Red level sexual content would only result in arguments about whether or not certain situations belonged in which category, and will drive us further away from the point.

Also, constructively, I feel like a complex system that players would potentially need to consult a chart to determine how to code the content in their scenes, tag them appropriately, and label them to avoid offending anyone, would just lead to confusion and a grand amount of work that would dissuade players.

When someone posts an event and lists the rating as "R"-rated with elements of violence, sexual situations, and gore, I think this gives the players a definite idea of what to expect from the scene. I really do think that this system is simple, gets the point across, and does a good job as it is.

But when it comes to non-events, such as random pickup scenes, the majority of people don't exactly know where the scene is going to go.

There are rules and guidelines as to what is acceptable or not in the game, and I feel like roleplaying in this nervous environment where people have to be constantly careful and pre-approve player decisions with other players works against the concept of healthy emotional disconnect, and instead encourages a lack of OOC emotional detachment.

Why aren't the rules, guidelines, some well-placed ratings and warnings before +events, and proper conduct behaviors not enough?

On a long enough timeline, if the expectation is that we are pre-approving already pre-approved roleplay behavior with the OOC personalities who control the characters, then aren't we technically creating an environment where extreme levels of OOC emotional attachment can fester?

Being communicative is one thing, but having to fear people with a lack of emotional disconnect is a whole other ball of wax.

@Ganymede said in State of Things:

You're not being nihilistic here. It appears that you are being willfully ignorant
I seriously wonder if you've been living under a rock or something

I fail to see where this sort of rude language towards me is respectful, constructive, or called for. Please tone down the pulpit.

I wasn't commenting on the validity of "black lives matter" or specific movements. As @Rook pointed out, I was commenting on the way people seem to already be cannibalizing each other. We are a competition in America, with each other, for survival in a sense. The resources? Healthcare, jobs, stability, housing, comfort, etc.

So, my rhetorical moral quandary is this: How can people strive for equality in a society where setting yourself apart from others as being more valuable is the main element of securing stability?

While I do not endorse it in any way, shape, or form, other people failing to succeed, being disqualified, imprisoned, or being branded something ugly greatly increases the chance of other people to capture those limited, unguaranteed resources.

It's a very convincing psychological reason to give no fucks about the people who are falling behind. The more they fall behind where you don't, the more reassurances you have that you won't fall behind, yourself.

@Arkandel said in Emotional separation from fictional content:

A question we need to look at though is... are such things getting reported or do those who could, or should, simply take their losses and stop logging on instead?

If anything, I think that false positives related to subjective, emotional responses are muddying the water when it comes to actual complaint-worthy behavior. These false positives make it harder to identify unethical behavior due to the number of accusations related to intent.

In the end, I think it all still circles back to the psychology of emotional attachment. Stalkers, creeps, cheaters, and predators tend to leave an audit trail of logs that can be forwarded to staff, but a lot of the major drama comes from emotional attachment and accusations of alleged intent.

Fuck, god knows myself as well as half of us would be fucked on an anonymous +complain system based solely on the crazy shit we've been accused of intending.

Edit: will note, I'm still a fan of my idea of a toggle command that silently forwards incoming pages to and from from a target, one-way only, to staff channel. Like a silent alert.

Bonus points for people who make Anglo-appearing Russians from east of Moscow and refer to themselves as Asian

@kitteh Yeah I learned a long time ago to never stay or return to a game with unethical staff. Nothing is worse than the passive aggressiveness that comes with the abusive marriage feeling of needing to stay at a game, but hating the game itself. It's also not just staff that can make people feel that way. Abusive/unethical players? Vicious mean girls gossip rings and people who will listen to them?

There are dozens of other online games to play. It's not worth it.

And if you feel that all of the games eventually turn out this way? Then in any order, I highly recommend Overwatch, Masturbation, and Ash vs Evil Dead

Those three things in any order will seriously clear that aggro right up.

@Three-Eyed-Crow oh so it's not about whitewashing, its about...gentilewashing?

I read just now Abigail Breslin is 1/2 Jewish but I'd imagine downplaying the Jewish was probably more related to the current trend of American network television sanitizing the non-Christian out of everything.

ABC pimps out well-dressed scumbag Joel Osteen and deems itself a family friendly network, owned by Disney, and formerly purchased from Pat Robertson. I tend to not watch ABC because their push of "family values" (airquotes) is way too overt for my liking.

PT is cheeseball garbage designed to fill out a character sheet will all kinds of higher-priced items for cheap. I absolutely hate it. Players should earn the dots on their sheet through RP, not cheese the system to get better dice rolls.

@Thenomain AGREED.

Here in Az, the area around Arizona State University in Tempe used to have affordable apartments ($800/mo for a 2BR around 2005) around the campus. Since then, those apartments have all been bought out and replaced. Berkshire-Hathaway got involved in real estate there. Now, many of these smaller apartment complexes have been replaced by apartments best described as luxury dorm apartment housing with courtyard pools and salons on the ground level.

A friend of mine tried to see if one was affordable and said they were running about $1400/mo for a 1br.

http://www.tempemetro.com

Rooftop basketball courts. Some 2br are going for $1850/mo

Edit: while the gallery on that site shows some definitely swanky/sexy apartment living, they're definitely cashing in on the $$$ that comes from being able to afford ASU and/or grant money, and gentrifying the ease of access to the campus area.

FFS the stuff around campuses used to be affordable. The whole point was to be able to afford college.

Social combat is important because nearly every player is interested in their social game succeeding, but very few players are willing to organically choose to lose in social situations.

Almost every time I've chosen to lose on a MU (because it made sense ICly) I tend to get pages asking if I'm ruining the character on purpose

These games have plenty of win and lose, but combat is avoided altogether by certain players because there is dice supported winning and losing in combat.

For this reason alone, social dice rolls are important and should be used.

I have massive genitalia, too! a full collection of x-men comics, work in the IT field, and have a semi-stable job. Now, I'm not into guys, but I can guarantee a post hookup high five, beer and wings, and Predator on BluRay. Maybe Predator 2. Because Busey.

Also, by massive genitalia, I mean I didn't specify that I have a lion's penis.

When I get in there, I don't let go.

However, the 8/9/rote bonus from PT doesn't clarify that it should be reserved to simple tasks.

For example, if an artist character has PT: Artist to rank 5, they'll have 8/9/rote on all crafts checks.

Now, realistically, a well trained artist (using chef as an example) should be able to craft a better than normal ham and cheese sandwich, reasonably, with rote successes, but when it comes to complex, highly difficult, or experimental meals, the degree of difficulty and attention required comes up, and I don't feel that even famous chefs like Gordon Ramsay do highly difficult things so simply.

I have zero doubt that Gordon Ramsay could cook me up a super-nice, rote-grade version of macaroni and cheese with his eyes closed, but where PT is concerned, Gordon Ramsay (crafts5 w 8/9/rote) could approach the following as if they were as difficult as making macaroni and cheese:

• Making a katana
• Cooking a Michelin Star grade meal for the Queen of England
• a birthday cake made out of human skin
• Recreating the Mona Lisa with matching brush strokes
• Making a samurai grade suit of lamellar armor to go along with a Hanzo sword of his own design.

This is where I think PT is broken. IMO the benefits should all be restricted to uses WITHIN SAID PROFESSION and the rote usage should be restricted to dice rolls that are not considered extended dice rolls.

Be it NWoD or CofD, I've seen too many people apply benefits of PT to other used outside of their professional training. Staff should make this distinction and keep an eye on it.

In short: Being an expert pastry chef with 8/9/rote on crafts rolls should never be applied to forging Hattori Hanzo katana

Edit/Afterthought: It is my belief that the draw for PT isn't to have 8/9/rote in <skillname> rolls pertaining to profession, but to have 8/9/rote in all uses of that skill, which is overpowered and, IMO, gamebreaking.

• Predators
• X-men back issues in long boxes
• LION PENIS
• Won't make eye contact or kiss during sex.

Final offer.