Posts made by Ghost

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.

@Bessarion said in Ruiz:

@Ghost I was being reactive and I wasn't being kind.

But what if other people here are getting snippy because they are being reactive?

@Bessarion said in Ruiz:

And I'm done giving your dysfunctional ass attention

"I don't think macha's a bad person but..."

Fuckin c'mon, Senator. There's nothing wrong with owning it.

True (and topical) story:

I started playing guitar when I was 9, and around the time I was 14 and started being all hormonal, my little brother (11) started playing guitar. Hindsight being 20/20 I identified myself as the "guitar son" of the house and felt like my little brother (who got everything he wanted MarshaMarshaMarsha etc) was going to make me less special because he, too, played guitar.

So I made fun of him, bothered him, and every time he played I made it so difficult for him that he eventually gave up and I resumed being the special guitar son of the house.

I couldn't let him have a good thing, because if I let him get comfortable with it and flourish then it made me feel like I was the loser in the equation.

Shame I did that, too. Who knows, we could have ended up in a metal or punk band together. I do regret it to this day.

Also, to add:

Of course, I joke up above with gifts of champagne bottles because the truth, tongue in cheek, is that despite the insistence of many that everyone here (including myself) is toxic, there sure are a lot of forays away from that safe space where we arent to interface with us and subject themselves to this so-called unbearable toxicity.

It's kind of the unspoken truth of the situation altogether

@hobos and that's a fair stance. People like Macha deserve to have a place where they can defend themselves without constant ridicule. Really, everyone in the community does.

Being above board, I don't personally agree with everyone else's assessment on the Cobalt situation (I literally just wanted to rule out retaliation before coming to a judgment, myself), but allow me to offer you a different perspective:

There is so much pent-up toxicity across the entire community that (since the days of WORA-on-forward) I think it's pretty obvious that there are two kinds of places: places where the toxicity is encouraged and places where the toxicity is attempted to be kept in check. MSB isn't perfect by any means and people can make what they want of it. It's a communal effort. We could chat about football, the newest season of Mandalorian, and have meditation circles.

Attempted being the key word.

I think that whenever anyone posts anything here trying to defend themselves or be constructive and the angry BMD crowd comes over to ridicule (or keep it going) you're going to see some of that old stuff ignite. For some of these people it's muscle memory, and it's hard to let go of (apparently).

My advice is to keep being faithful to your beliefs and don't be afraid to call out when you think this place isn't acting like it wanted to be. We're all humans here and it may help to have a cricket on the shoulder chime in when old reflexes are kicking.

In short: I think your respectful opinions and perspectives are fair and welcome

Can I just say that I think it's great that despite a split in the community, the number of people monitoring or reserving the right to come back to post proves THAT MSB IS ALIVE AND KICKIN BABY WOOOO

...and to think someone I don't remember or give a shit about earlier was like (sour voice) msb has only 5 active users waaah

On a personal note, it means a lot to me because I am literally an undead phantasm that would cease to exist if no one remembered (or cared for) who I was, so a huge THANK YOU to both forums for all of the attention. It is literally sustaining my life-force and allowing me to haunt my ex-wife and her new Chad husband while I watch little Kevin grow into an impressive point guard at his YMCA kids league. Without all of this I would be sucked into the bright, glowing vortex of ecclesiastical light I've been avoiding since I became a ghost.

@Macha said in 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."

@Cobalt said in Ruiz:

No. I didn’t TS Isaac. I RP’d all of once with him where I was acting as GM and was busy having a vampire spray other characters in the scene with pepper spray

Also! Cool! That wasn't so hard now, was it? Now I understand/believe that there was no attached retaliatory motive in the whole thing and anyone who suggests otherwise after the fact is being an asshole.

Do I feel this warranted the level of attack that it did? No. But you do you. It's your game. Whatevs. Shut it down, nuke it, whatever, ban whoever you want.

I could care less who does TS and don't give a fuck who you RP with. I don't slut-shame. This was simply (as I have stated multiple times) that the level of response from you (banning multiple people, closing the game, accusing SA) seemed to be a nuclear response and have seen responses like this more often when some kind of triangle shit explodes. Given that this Isaac player was demanding so much secrecy, it stood to wonder if that was because they were keeping other people in a harem compartmentalized.

So since the answer is no? Boom. Case closed. Still doesn't make sense to me but at least it wasn't retaliatory for that reason.

Super bizarre social scene here.

@Cobalt said in Ruiz:

Just so we’re clear, @reimesu @Ghost @Derp @Ganymede Do me a favor, and don’t come around to any game I run in the future. Because you won’t be welcome.

How much do you value a promise from me?

@hobos said in Ruiz:

Also maybe so. I would prefer to think that nobody here is on any "side" except the truth, though. And I would love to see people on this forum acting that way.

Ditto. SA, being a sex creeper, etc is a HUUUGE accusation and I don't give a fuck whether or not Macha is popular. I'm loathe to see posters and pitchforks marched out before anyone knows what the actual truth is, and feel even less comfortable when people won't answer questions about having skin in the game surrounding the accusation.

I guess it doesn't matter in the end though because it seems that the necessity of truth is pretty much secular.

@Bessarion said in Ruiz:

One is based on logs. The other is fanfiction. Can you spot the difference between these two pictures?

Uhm. duh-doy. Logs and fan-fiction are words and not pictures. There is no difference between those pictures. They aren't pictures at all.

Let me turn this around on you.

What is different between one person reading a non-sex filled 3rd party log between two consenting writers and determining that it is sexual assault to the degree of needing to spread it around to everyone that so-and-so is a sexual creeper...and one person speculating that the reason that this person did so is out of an undisclosed personal motive related to a question theyre refusing to answer?

The difference is that one group of people actually give a fuck about the truth, and another group of people are day 3 into the congratulatory kegger party into not giving a fuck about the truth and getting on with the fun stuff.