Posts made by Ghost

@testament said in Review of Recent Bans:

I'm sorry. This is wrong. I have a point to try and post as little as possible, but this is morally wrong.

I'm sure they can discuss it in infinitum at that new forum

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.

Piece of shit internet people who consider themselves hilarious (yet noble, caring safe space) people to bag on someone for having a cause, but never stop to consider the reason for the cause could be related to personal trauma.

Those people can go fuck themselves.

I feel this is a fair response.

No Battletech MU has lasted long. Other media including Mechwarrior online, MW5, MegaMek, and games on VTT are thriving just fine. If you want to play Battletech or the Mechwarrior RPG I recommend you do those.

The modern MUer seems to prefer roleplay that doesn't involve technical systems, doesn't include risky pass/fail combat, and always seems to default to relationship/TS roleplay involving coffee or bar roleplay. Combat and PVP are avoided and the whole point behind Battletech is combat and pvp.

Why put in months of your life working a new system to try to recreate a system that already exists BETTER elsewhere when the majority playerbase would use the space for the same thing they've been doing across their previous 45 games they'd played, only with differing variations on theme?

Grab the # of people interested in filling out dots on mech sheets, use existing resources, and then use something simple like Discord for ongoing sideRP. Battletech is for the joy of punching through shoulder armor, getting that crit, and igniting the Trebuchet's shoulder LRM stores that blows off the entire side of the mech.

FYI.

Emmet Otter's Jugband Christmas is on Amazon Prime. If you haven't seen it you owe it to yourself.

@arkandel https://nypost.com/2021/11/30/nicolas-cage-to-play-dracula-in-new-monster-film-renfield/

Cage has been cast as fucking Dracula in an upcoming movie/show called Renfield.

This will inevitably be good tv.

@jeshin said in The Desired Experience:

@devrex

My desired experience is to escape the burdens of a dissatisfying work, family, and sex life to replace it with simulated romances that I carefully craft to fulfill my emotional needs. Then, should I find disappointment will attack it as a personal slight against me and then obsess over needing to find "safe" roleplay, which means pigeonholing my online activities to players and roleplay situations that will fulfill these needs, but do so under the guise of it being their fault and not mine.

TLDR - Roleplay is Escapism

Haha I didn't think this would happen. Cheers, bruh

@kestrel said in Paying for a MU*?:

At this point, I kind of feel like I should be paid to play someone else's MU*.

That's the spirit.

You know, given that most MUs rely on higher numbers of people/bits logged in to encourage people to try the game, at the very least even the most unwanted player on those games should have some sort of sign-spinner salary.

@faraday Agreed on the tip jar, but I feel an entry fee at the door is the line. If access is locked behind a paywall, even if it's called a tip jar, it's arguable in court.

I'd like to add...

MU has been using unauthorized source materials for decades. I heard once a Matrix MU got a c&d from WB, and know that Blood of Dragons dbags tried to get GRRM to shut down any GoT MU that wasn't theirs. Simply put, the MU community has been lucky to not draw the Eye of Mordor over the years in terms of unauthorized use.

• Many WoD games have built into the code proprietary systems and information. Same goes for Shadowrun, Star Wars, and other licensed game systems that either have the information within the books baked into the code or offered on the websites.
• A lot of artwork, images, and other copyrights/trademarks are in use in game wikis, including use of actor's images without their (or the photographer's) consent.

I'm of the opinion that the only reason the MU community hasn't seen lawyers kicking in doors and shutting down games is because the community's saving grace has been that there is no money being exchanged. In fact, there are risks the IP holders take by not acting when their IPs are monetized without authorization. Currently, the cost of SEEKING damages probably outweighs the rewards, but if word gets around that money is changing hands you'll see a lot more c&d, especially for WoD products who are very aware of the MU community.

When money enters the equation everything changes.

• Open source code bases usually remain so on the basis that they aren't monetized. If you charge for a game using a code base you didn't write you could be in an actionable position. It would be wrong to monetize an FS3 game without @faraday OK'ing it or getting a cut, but even if fara didn't care that doesn't mean other coders wont.
• If your content isn't original (d&d, star wars, world of darkness) and you're monetizing it, you're actionable
• Use PB's? Because every player and npc PB is now a monetized use of that person's image without their consent.

Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. MU is a text based amateur quasi-fan fiction writing hobby with slight gaming elements with less than 200 identifiably active players. The amount of money required to monetize a game isn't worth the amount that would be earned, and the likelihood that some jilted player will take things to extreme lengths for a refund (small claims?) is high.

That game VaultGirl or whoever was running where they were taking $$$ donations for extra xp, gear, etc was using Fallout's IP. They're lucky they didn't get a tap from a lawyer because when the MU doesn't exchange money it's a cease and desist, but when money is traded the question of how much of that the IP holder is entitled to comes into play.

@cobalt The feelings of isolation, alienation, and impostor syndrome that come with this hobby and it's insane social constructs are normal. Almost every person who I've talked to who stopped playing MUs and stopped caring about the 'social scene' are living much more fulfilling day to day lives with a lot less drama and feelings of low self esteem. Myself included.

Realizing that people are ultimately replaceable and years of effort amounts to nothing kept is key. Everyone's life deserves to build and grow. This hobby is just...treading water and calling "had less drama that one week" as a victory. After years I really have come to the conclusion that the amount of time people spend in this particular hobby takes a heavy impact on their emotional and social health. Many who I talk to who quit the games agree that even socializing with non-MUers is strange after coming out of the cave; that it took them a while to properly communicate outside of the hobby due to the echo chamber impact to their social skills.

Take this as an opportunity to get out there and create something, grow, and connect with regular people without these extreme social abnormalities. It's HEALTHY and it feels good.

I recommend:

• Online D&D/Etc groups over discord
• Online writing clubs
• Take up stuff like disc golf or a tactile hobby like knitting
• Stop watching the news so regularly if you haven't yet. Little headlines are fine but all of the propaganda on Facebook, CNN. FOX, etc is designed to cause emotional impact. In some way this stuff is poisonous.

BE HAPPY. ENJOY IT.

@mr-johnson said in Project Gridlock (Temp Name) Matrix style mush:

Effectively what this means is that the Matrix world or The Grid is a world of darkness style world with players taking the role of vampires changelings mages excetra as normal but there's a second grid of the real world players can wake up into and jack in and out of the grid.

Fun fact.

My RL existence is that of a brain wearing bone armor and a meat suit who jacks into the internet to play vampires and werewolves.

Non-sarcastic comment:

I would recommend a theme other than "normal people who connect to an online gaming session that hosts an exhaustively huge WoD base set in New England 4.0" and maybe go with something Sci fi or other than a meta version of what the players are actually doing in real life (people who jack into MU server to play WoD).

Because I would hate for it know that this exists:

PLAYERS who connect to ONLINE GAME to play CHARACTERS WHO ARE PLAYERS connecting to an ANOTHER ONLINE GAME to play CHARACTER-PLAYER OWNED VAMPIRE CHARACTERS who TS and then disconnect to fight with each other and act out being players who have technically IC/OOC drama about online "relationships" and then disconnect to fight with each other about their online characters on the real MSB who fight with each other about their 2nd level IC vampires who do sex stuff.

OR I totally want to join and reopen WORA in the first layer human-space so that people can disconnect from the vampire space and have technically IC flame wars as assumed OOC personas.

Brain hurts now. Getting out of here.

@astrid said in Dare I ask...:

by trying to do everything for everyone?

Sidebar.

If there's a MU out there that will do the weeds on my front lawn, lemme know.

First..."friends" is a subjective term. To those who rely on deep, in-person contact it's not likely that they would describe online friends as actual friends, but to the person with mostly online friends they find those relationships to be qualifying friendships. So...po-tay-toe, po-tah-to.

Myself being a person with a good number of in-person friendships and having been a player in the MU community for years, I can say that I wouldn't describe many of my "Mu community friendships as actual friendships.

I can only think of a small number of times where crossing from text to voice wasn't an absolute nightmare. I think most "MU friends" are best described as "Acquaintances who symbiotically need each other's presence to validate their hobby and online social life who want to keep rules on how and when the acquaintanceship crosses over into the real world; they will likely not follow you to the real world should you choose to leave the hobby."

Just being frank, here. While a number of the people in the hobby are friendly with each other, be it to gossip or roleplay or TS or to assume mutual defense to keep creepers or shitty roleplayers out...the vast majority of them wouldn't drive chicken soup to your house if you were on your deathbed. The majority will not want you to have access to their home, spouses, or children. The people here are predominantly strangers to each other and while there are exclusions to every concept...the "friendship" boundary is placed on involvement in the hobby.

Which, to me, is not a friendship.

@tinuviel said in Roster Characters & WoD?:

@ghost said in Roster Characters & WoD?:

I don't see this happening in the MU community, though.

Of course not, some folks hate the idea of giving their email address to games. Besides any measure of proof of identity can be falsified enough to pass a bouncer relatively easily. It wouldn't take much to fool game staff.

That's why I like my idea of "people need to be vouched for and if you vouch for them and they turn out to be a fucked up person it reflects on you." Granted, I doubt people would be willing to stake themselves like this considering how tumultuous and paranoid the hobby can be. People tend to go from "best person ever" to "card carrying sociopath" in 1.5 seconds when they try to "break up" with a TS partner. I still don't see people being willing to apply risk to themselves, though.

All I know is two things:

1. If I ran a group/gaming space and had a problem with creepers coming in, I'd do this. I'd make the guest list "implicit deny" and like anything from the Masonic Order, country club, sex club, or a book club I'd hold people who "vouch" for others to their word. Staking people's involvement against "vouching" forces people to make better choices when nominating people for membership. Same concept applies in giving your recommendation for a new-hire at a job.
2. I've surpassed my allotted number of posts to MSB for the year and am going back to haunting. Hope all is well, Tin. Take care.

@Tinuviel @icanbeyourmuse Both good points, so really I think the only solution (since setting up SSL would be a bitch) would be to fall back on old-fashioned "gatekeeping" methods that clubs, parties, and other events fall back on. I don't see this happening in the MU community, though.

@mietze said in Roster Characters & WoD?:

I kind of wonder though how one would track creepers/abusive people

Since most people who run games won't take the time/money to properly do SSL (and because the technology is literally decades behind modern standards) there's only one real option.

1. Auto-registration of new users needs to be shut off.
2. All users need to be tied to a federated/third party ID system (AresID, etc)
3. (most important) New/unknown players will need to be vouched for, and if "unknown" player turns out to be a repeat offender creep the player who vouched for them will be banned/punished/given 1 warning.

If you leverage people's attachment to the hobby with helping keep it safe, you'd probably see a "safer" (though I hate that word) environment rather quickly. Either way there's no way to keep out anonymous creepers, pedophiles, and abusers without either 1) putting in a security measure on the door (which means putting a gate in front of "walk-in" users or 2) requiring more money be spent to run the games. If random "person who was TSing with the creeper who knew they had a bad reputation but they seemed fine at the time" understood that there could be ramifications for vouching for the person, then maybe they'd think twice.

@ganymede said in Roster Characters & WoD?:

@grayson

I r samuel haight cat.

+10,000 points for the Samuel Haight callout.