@theznar said in Is this a really dumb theme?:
@Ghost Thanks! I just needed someone else to be like...that sounds cool! The internet has jaded me.
If you rock themes like "WW2 pilots", jazz, 1940s/50s fashion, the dawn of the era of television, radio shows, etc I think it's a great idea, especially if you bend things to break down sexism and racism walls from the real world 40's/50's. Female pilots, black officers over white soldiers, etc.
@Pyrephox said in Emotional bleed:
@L-B-Heuschkel To some extent, there are several different issues:
People who use "have some ooc/ic separation" to be dicks in a way that would STILL BE A DICK even if we were sitting around playing cards or a board game. Like, rubbing someone's face in a loss, targeting another player to ruin their experience, mocking how someone plays - being upset about these things says nothing about one's ic/ooc separation, and trying to hide behind "oh, you just don't have good boundaries" is dumb. Bad sportsmanship is the center of it.
People who use "everyone gets attached to characters" to be dicks in a way that is manipulative and creepy, and yeah, would still be a dick if you were playing, idk, Warhammer tabletop or something, and decided that your faction was objectively the best and threw temper tantrums whenever you lost. They use their "attachment" to demand, overtly or covertly, that the game and other players conform to that attachment - I think my character is awesome, so I demand that you treat him/her like they're awesome, or my heart will break and it's all your fault.
I'm someone that tried to maintain a pure separation between IC/OOC, so I'll chime in here.
As someone who has been threatened, threatened with self-harm, yelled at by players for their emotional/marital health, had to wriggle out of uncomfortable RL attachment issues, been told "I love you" out of nowhere, been the target of trying to breach RL separation with promise of sexual favors, repeatedly dumped into situations that were I need you to do this for my RL needs, etc etc etc....
I came to the belief that at all times the best policy was to make it clear the following:
I came to that point because, frankly, I was sick and tired of people accusing me of off the wall shit or make me feel like their emotional health depended on my attendance and/or action through a PC. Which, I'm sympathetic to people who are at that place emotionally, but the only way to keep myself sane and healthy was to accept that if anyone is like that towards PCs in the hobby, it's probably not because of one player's existence; if it wasn't me getting that attachment it'd be someone else next week (or maybe I wasn't the only one getting that level of heat at the same time).
I think that list above is healthy, sets fair boundaries, and is a good mantra to follow. IC/OOC separation avoids bleed, and I think it needs to be a practice (like meditation or yoga). After all, plenty of actors have mental/emotional issues because they committed too much to a character. Why should amateur "roleplayers" on the internet be any different?
@theznar said in Is this a really dumb theme?:
for years and have recently gotten back into it(Mostly sci-fi and early Wheel of Time games). I am feeling the urge to run a little mush again. I'm installing Ares Mush, and trying to decide on a theme. I wanted something that would work well FS3, and came up with what might be the most idiotic thing....but it also seems like it could be a lot of fun in a pick up and play kind of way.
I find the idea of a P-51 Mustang against flying saucers to be fun. Jazz joints doing songs and big band swing for troops saving the world? Japanese pilots flying alongside their WW2 enemies against a common threat?
Nope. Nothing fun at all there. 
@tek said in Emotional bleed:
@Ghost LARP has changed a lot philosophically since 2002. Now, there are all sorts of structures in place and best practices for managing bleed, including debriefings, warmups and cooldowns.
That's good. I think I'll always miss LARP to some extent. I'll have to check in with my buddy who still does it avidly to hear about some of this, stuff. I know back in the day LARP was very dogmatic between OWBN and CamFanclub, but not sure how well it's done here in my town.
@tek said in MU* Gripes and Peeves:
I think it's interesting that LARPers address the concept of emotional bleed as an inevitability and discuss how to manage it, while many MUers still treat it as aberrant.
Not going to argue that at all.
As both a former LARPer and a former MUer, I can tell you that both hobbies have major issues with emotional bleed, and both hobbies struggle with it. Both hobbies have their obsessives who struggle with RL work and RL relationships to maintain the hobbies, build their lives around it, or have emotional issues that carry over into RL (or vice versa, RL into the hobby) due to emotional attachment issues related to conflict. I know people in RL who have lived in squalor for over 20 years to maintain their 2x LARP games per week, can't go into their bedrooms because its filled with trash and hoard so they sleep on a sofa, and have been sofa-hopping LARP houses since the early 2000s. Plenty of them never tried to advance themselves professionally or through a relationship, and many of their achievements or life stories revolve around characters they played in 2002...in 2020.
I just happen to be of the opinion that the question isn't "What is the best way to handle the inevitability of emotional bleed?" but instead "What is it that makes emotional bleed so inevitable in those hobbies?" Why is this behavior less associated with playing Among Us and when it happens when people play "Call of Duty" it's approached like an unhealthy attachment, but when it happens in MU the inmates push to treat it like a normalized behavior that shouldn't be approached as abnormal?
Over my "X" number of years partaking in this hobby (I LARPed for maybe 4-5 years but haven't since around 2002) I've seen a lot of people burn out and put too much of their own mental/emotional health in this particular bucket, and I'm sure each of those people had a different reason why. I'd just hate to see people struggle with this concept that some of this level of attachment is healthy or normal, because like I told many of my old LARP friends: "You don't want to wake up 15 years from now and see that this is the only thing you did."
I just hope people are careful with that and mindful of that. No creative hobby is worth losing your mental and emotional health over, doubly so when it's not an active part of the real life you have to face when the laptop is shut off and you have a marriage, kids, etc that are affected by it. That's a lesson that I learned somewhat the hard way, and I feel lucky that I realized that when I did.
Regardless, every individual in those hobbies has to weigh that for themselves. Some will weigh it objectively and make smart decisions and others will weigh it inaccurately and struggle with it, and like any addiction if it's not weighed carefully it's usually not realized until things have gone a little too far.
Emotional bleed in LARP or MU is abberant, either way, and something people should keep a serious and objective eye on.
@silverfox the current state of CPS breaks my heart.
Had a sudden realization today.
Between living in a state that regularly hits over 105 degrees (and rarely gets below 70 in winter) and my job altering the dress code to allow for cargo shorts and birkenstocks...
...I just realized that I don't think I've actually worn pants in about a year and a half. I can't remember the list time I wore a pair of jeans. I actually don't know where the jeans I own are right now because I haven't gone looking for them in my closet in a while. I've been working at home for the last 9 months straight and technically a pair of cargo shorts are now my "getting stuff outside of the house" done pants, and have been living near exclusively in baskeball shorts, a raccoon onesie, and my underwear for 8 or so months.
So weird.
@Misadventure Each of the 8 classes have their own core story. There will be missions all players do, but sub-missions that focus on the story of each of the 8 classes with their own NPCs, distinct endings, etc. In that, SWTOR has a really great replay value because creating a brand new "Jedi Consular" after finishing "Jedi Knight" has story value.
This is if I'm reading you right and you're not familiar with it. Apologies if you are and I just splained.
I'm kinda surprised more people didn't like SWTOR's Fallen Order/Eternal Throne. I found it to be much more like KOTOR in terms of style of play. I enjoyed it, and after 2+ years of straight MMO kind of stuff, it was nice to sidetrack into 2 self-contained stories that had more of that KOTOR feel.
@Ganymede I have a friend who says "supposably" and it drives me up the wall.
@Cupcake How are you getting HBO Max content, if I may ask?
I can get HBO Max content through my laptop just fine, but in my house are Roku devices. HBO is stonewalling Roku/Amazon from having the HBO Max app. Hulu has portal access to HBO Max, but it's really just HBO Now with the Max-specific content scrubbed out (so no Raised by Wolves, Titans, South Park, etc).
I hope they figure this thing out, soon. There's a TON of content on HBO Max and I want it all (not just some of it)
Please stop badgering me to partake in the office charity drive.
It's not my responsibility to help the company reach this year's super specific goal to a charity that only spends about 12% of its donation intake on actually helping people, when all this really is is a front for driving down the amount of tax the company has to pay.
@Macha Yeah made me sad, too. I've played a LOT of guitar since I was about 8 and so all the big guitar gods were my heroes: Satch, Eddie, Vai, etc. A lot of those guys were my idols.
@ThoughtBubble said in MUSH conflict... sad face?:
@Ghost I am thinking I might put together some low key MOTW games. I have been wanting to do that for a while. Maybe if I can locate some people in my time zone, I can get something started.
Another thing you can do is gather some people you DO get along with and open up a tabletop game, but then have collaborative writing based on the characters in the story in between sessions. Call it a hybrid.
@ThoughtBubble Hey whatever you do end up doing for fun? Enjoy it, and I hope it works well for you. Sometimes reconfiguring is really healthy and you never know what you might find. Don't let the negativity bring you down and approach this as a fun life move/exploration?
Best of luck and stay safe.
Eric Andre and Borat returning in the same year. I could cry with joy.
@ThoughtBubble said in MUSH conflict... sad face?:
To the credit of the staff of most games, they seem to recognize this behavior as childish and inappropriate, but the only staffer who has been willing to handle it in a way that doesn't effectively kill the game for me is Fara. (Thanks Faraday!)
Follow-up. I agree with the shoutout to @faraday. Even when we disagree on things she provides a mature counterpoint and keeps things civil, which I have always appreciated. I'm a supporter.
One thing that came to mind while I was thinking about this thread was the concept of self-esteem and insecurity that I regularly ran into on these games. I think it's important to recognize the number of people who at any given time worry that they're being avoided, blacklisted, shunned, making a fool out of themselves, disliked, that their poses are being judged unfairly, that people don't want to RP with them, that someone's spreading false rumors about them, etc, etc, etc. There also seems to be a number of people out there who can be fairly vocal about how great they and theirs are, how they don't believe there to be bullies, cliques, etc, and I've always found that somewhat telling.
Throw a rock on this forum and you'll hit someone who feels that they're being judged unfairly and takes great care to constantly consider whether or not there will be retribution drama for speaking up or standing up for themselves. Throw a rock and you'll hit someone who worries about being silently judged (and then overtly judged through pages, IMs, cliques, etc) in a way that will leave them unable to enjoy the hobby. Throw a rock and you'll hit a staffer who had to weigh whether or not disciplining a problem player would result in drama/accusations that would destroy their game.
I don't believe these insecurities to be 100% on the shoulders of the insecure, because I think a much larger number of people are well aware of how much nastiness goes on behind the scenes with some fairly prevalent players. A lot of people just want to have fun without having to prove themselves as being worthwhile to others, and I've always find that somewhat depressing that this insecurity is as pervasive as I saw it to be.
Like Warma, the part that sucks is that there's something this hobby really could provide that I couldn't get anywhere else, and I occasionally check back in to see if the landscape has changed. Personally, I don't think the landscape WILL change until some key people go away,
@ThoughtBubble I can really only advise as a former player who, maybe a little over a year ago, decided to delete the apps, website bookmarks, etc and move on with other night hobbies.
For me, it got to the point where the games were synonymous with the OOC politics. I tried going in-cognito but I'd get grilled in pages about who I am, or how my PB was a PB of someone who hurt a 3rd party friend and ruined it for them, or unrequested personal details about how the person I'm roleplaying with was a leg-pissing slut. Then, i tried going in-cognito and playing undeclared female PCs, but that resulted in page harassment. It got to the point where no matter my better efforts the OOC politics, the circlejerk of staff friendship benefits, and the extreme pushiness involved in the murky half-truths of character romances just became constant and uncomfortable.
I think the general MU culture has become a cult in the sense that it can be very bizarre to outsiders, and the moment you start to grasp for more mature, rational behavior the discomfort becomes all the more apparent. There is a way things are done and the cycles have repeated for decades with few changes. There are many people who arent half as honest as they claim to be, and villain figures who arent half as evil as some problem people (who may or may not be considered problem people, yet they are) make them out to be.
My advice is that if you feel that there's no way to escape whatever you find negative about the hobby...then dont dedicate another decade to trying to find a place where it works. Some people have good successes with clinging to very specific bubbles of trusted players (while weathering the bizarre/corrupt/dishonest behaviors), but even then I hear a lot about how it's an obstacle course to enjoy the game as a whole while navigating these types.
For me, I ultimately decided that what I originally wanted was a large group of people working together to have fun, but I realized that I couldn't remember the last time I felt an environment so welcoming/rewarding without little political/social camps and hierarchies.
I've talked with people who also agree that social life outside of MU can be stunted from the drama of MU. I've focused these days on PS4, board game nights, mmorpgs, tabletop rpgs, and disc golf. It's been fun and rewarding for me, and I dont feel so much like I'm having to swim upstream against a bunch of challenging personalities to simply enjoy my evenings.
So all I can tell you aside from this is that I cut the cord and my general evenings are way less frustrating and self-esteem compromising than they used to be.