@faraday said in I owe a lot of people some apologies.:
That's mostly due to a lack of spoons and personal issues, not quitting the hobby as a whole. I think many of the Ares games are lovely, but I have very narrow tastes (which is why I've usually run my own games.)
Oh I know and I apologylize if I spoke FOR you, hence why I didn't name you. Regardless, you, me, and a lot of people have been affected by the whole "normalizing lord of the flies" stuff
@Tapewyrm if you're looking from people from the WORA era, you may have better luck posting in reddit in r/MUD
I say this with as little bile as possible, but since the WORA era, a lot of the more level-headed people left the hobby between then and now. VTTs and MMORPGs were a welcome escape from the normalized bullying and drama in the "Hog Pit" section of the forum. When the admin closed it down there was a rift in the community between two groups:
A lot (and I mean a lot) of players quit the hobby between then and now because a certain "vibe" kind of got normalized and "dishonest character assassination" became more popular an approach than "communicate with each other and resolve your issues". It was simply easier, when it came to people who disappointed you or didn't go with your design, to chase or bully that person into feeling unwelcome on the server.
Edit: (And if that doesn't work, use drama/lies/accusations to isolate them from the people who like them and then they'll leave! Again...moral highground )
Then, naturally, people with that mindset started getting in with staff or opened games of their own, resulting in a whole 2nd string crowd of people who partake in the "Hog Pit" style of bullying so that they also get RP opportunities.
If you're truly coming back, you're coming back at a very exhausted and contentious time for the Mush/Mux crowd. Many from the WORA era, myself included, have stopped playing on the games altogether.
In my estimation, there were a number of game staff/coders during the WORA era who kept people like this in check, but those people either got sick of it, aged out, or went to do other stuff. Without that stopgap the "PHBs" now want control of who is or isn't welcome in the community.
It's at the point that a code base used by many, many games (Ares) own creator doesn't partake in the hobby, but that other group (claiming the moral high ground, btw) seems to claim that everything will go back to normal so long as certain admin from this forum are sufficiently exiled, the Hog Pit is reopened, and the ability to publicly humiliate people on this forum is reestablished.
@Macha One time while minding my own business, I randomly wandered into the Intel plant here in town (never been there) to look at one of the pictures on the wall, and then felt suddenly inclined to grill their HR department on the treatment of a specific employee I haven't talked to in 5 years on events that happened 5 years ago.
So I suppose it's possible it could happen organically, out-of-nowhere-like, and be a face-value thing
Note: This is not trolling or sarcasm. I actually did this. I swear.
@Tapewyrm said in I owe a lot of people some apologies.:
Exactamundo. That's why I'm essentially asking you if you are sexist against men, as part of my assessment of this environment.
Alright, let's be constructive, here.
You're (allegedly) an old personality from WORA, having just made an account, and have all of these very specific questions regarding conduct and sexism of all things being asked in the air of "do you follow your own rules?".
Now, it's possible that you're simply some long-lost 3rd party WORA-ite suddenly (out of nowhere) walking in for a "spot assessment of the environment", but I'm assuming it's far more likely that this is related to some kind of pre-loaded Q&A routine.
So why don't you stop asking these questions and start asking the ones you plan to ask 3 or 4 questions down the line, or stop assessing the environment and explain why after all of these years the sudden interest in MSB and their policies requires this thorough an analysis?
I don't want to come across as unfriendly, but I've been in this hobby way too long to believe this is some kind of random, completely organic interest in the forum's policies on sexism. And if this IS somehow some sudden random person's desire to assess the policies of this forum, why this forum?
I promise that this isn't me on a VPN
Or is it???
lol #spicyItalianFootlong
@Tapewyrm a brand new account but with mysterious prior knowledge of this place....
Greetings to you, mysterious anonymous person!
@faraday said in Bring back the Hog Pit:
Burning the evidence of mistreatment may not help them either though.
Honestly, if there was any chance of those people being made to feel like their behavior isn't welcome, it would have happened years ago. I think it went the other direction and people cheering their friends on while they chercher le poundOfFlesh(tm) #purposefullyBadFrench. I think it feels good to get punch down on people who annoy you, doubly so if your friends reward you for it, but no matter how you cut it, punishing people for self gratification and praise is the opposite of healthy.
...and it's not like the Hog Pit itself is required for objective and ACTUAL discussion on unsafe behavior by certain players. There are ways to keep each other notified, even on a forum, without attacking.
In my estimation, here is what the community needs to do:
If that means the community needs to split and the people who are sick of being treated like shit need to get away from the ones who enjoy treating others like pieces of shit, then all the better.
But...and this is an important but...if the Hog Pit ever reopens and the floodgates open, letting the people who haven't had regular targets for a while now back at their old hunting ground, you can pretty much guarantee 10 more years of that behavior being normalized.
@faraday said in Bring back the Hog Pit:
Could also delete it but maintain a readonly archive on some fileshare somewhere for posterity. I've been told that buried in with the toxic sludge are some useful tidbits, but YMMV.
I'm not 100% sure of this, but the only people really wanting to keep a readable copy of the Hog Pit are the same people who want it to be back open to partake in it.
That, and the HogPit is like 3000 pages and if you kept only ONE INSTANCE of each of the following threads it would probably be 300 pages:
The whole thing is clearly 80%+ abuse give or take the same 8 people bragging to each other about how great they are at RPing together, so I'm with you. Not entirely sure what "good stuff" should be saved there, especially given how cyclical the conversations are half of those same conversations have already probably been recycled at the other place.
I think it (HP) stands more than anything as a recorded history of mistreatment for far, far more people than it stands as a memory of good times for the people who thrived in it, and for the life of me cant understand why the former isnt the more important culture to protect
@Pandora Nah, fuck that. It was just a place where people were literally allowed to bully others without any sort of checks and balances. If you want that kind of action it's available on another forum.
...however
Most of the usual bullying targets didn't join the other forum and I think it's probably best for the mental and emotional health of people who don't want to be bullied to have a space safe from those people.
Fuck bringing it back. Delete it and nuke the history.
@Derp @Misadventure I think Derp has it. It's all about the formatting.
I'm not ND, but I could easily read anything in bulleted points, and even find the idea of reading code sometimes easier than reading specific people's text dumps.
Massive blocks of paragraphs hurt my eyes, especially without indentation, so try to keep paragraphs precise. Bullet points and using Header formats helps, too. I also tend to use the table of contents/headers features in gdocs/office to adjust the format to be easier to read.
Sadly, if it's a massive info-dump about proprietary game-related information, they're probably at the mercy of whoever collated the data to begin with.
@Misadventure said in Hidden information and enjoyment:
I wonder what the real difference is?
I think it comes down to assumed role.
On a largely base level, people expect two things from a MU:
I think the arguments break out because Player A makes a decision that Player B doesn't like, B has invested in A and does not want to invest in the story change, and in some cases neither will be happy because B and A don't see eye to eye on the change.
Most players don't get cozy with staff PCs for a number of reasons, so there's less direct investment and intimacy affected when staff inserts plot change.
@faraday said in Hidden information and enjoyment:
Well, like I mentioned - I prefer collaboration and transparency
I'm so torn.
It's really, really hard to do anything secret when it comes to "cooperative gaming/storytelling" without effectively neutering the sense of surprise. This got me in to regular trouble in MU games.
It's like this:
So you're either being super careful and plotting out "surprises" that aren't surprising (thus, less fun) at all, or you open yourself up for cheese/metagaming/ooc issues.
The only TRUE answer I can see is to either save all of your plot twists and secrets for solo writing projects, or there need to be better-defined rules as to how players react to elements outside of their control and how this is okay to do. There's GOT to be some room for each player to embellish whatever they want without ten miles of red tape, though, right?
I literally struggled with this on every game I ever MUd.
@faraday said in Hidden information and enjoyment:
Both Little House on the Prairie and Deadwood are westerns, but they are vastly different experiences
Off-topic, but you should know this sentence set off a 2-megaton nuclear creativity-splosion in my head. In my head, AL Swearingen just yelled at little Laura Ingalls to get the fuck out of his saloon, and creepy-as-ever Brad Dourif as Doc is getting creepy at Michael Landon.
But excellent points dear to my heart. Everyone had to be telling the same thematic stories in the same genre/theme/setting or else it's a mess.
@Misadventure said in Hidden information and enjoyment:
How important is it to you to be able to, or not have to, explain your character's thinking, emotions etc to a table of RPers?
I always preferred not to have to explain OOCly my thoughts, but absolutely need control of my PCs mindset. When I have creative dictation I like to be free to direct the character as to what makes sense to me. One of the best parts of RP with others is having elements outside of your direction, thus keeping things fresh.
How do you feel about others doing to when you are at the table?
I'm fine with it.
How about the GM describing the NPCs actions?
I think this is necessary, so absolutely it's important. The GM controls literally everything that isn't a PC, so the more the GM fleshes content out, the better it is for everyone.
On a similar vein, how interesting/important is it to you to be able to keep secrets from the other players - meaning whatever it is, it is never discussed in front of them until it's revealed in game fiction?
It depends on the secret, but this is where things always get complicated with MU. This can cause OOC issues, and sometimes the amount of control some other players want to have over what everyone else does (or metagaming) makes having and keeping PC secrets a definite must.
One time I kept a secret that a character I made at launch (BSG game), I was planning on having them die during the initial Cylon invasion. One player kept grilling me in pages about what I planned, etc. I played it vague. I killed the character ICly. They got mad to the point of complaining to staff OOCly.
It's dangerous territory
Same again for other players at the table?
Same for me, same for them
Same again for the GM and their NPCs?
GM secrets are mandatory, as are the NPC secrets. Players are not entitled to know those secrets, nor are they entitled to determine what those secrets are. It's a simple facet of Gm-driven RP.
Someone I spoke to about this also brought up character betrayal. Everything from minor theft, to relatively small working at counter purposes, to full on setting characters up to take a hit.
I myself have never seen that on a MU* where it wasn't really a player using IC lies to cover for OOC lies.
I've been on both sides of the coin, and it can get dicey. "Betrayal" has a lot of options:
Best laid plans of mice and men in mind, I've tried to introduce IC betrayal elements and it turned into an OOC shitstorm due to players "fighting over creative control". It's pretty normal for two people sharing story elements to have disagreements over who holds the steering wheel. But...if you oocly prepare everyone for some kind of betrayal, it opens the situation to metagaming or the entire reveal being rendered boring due to it not being a shock at all.
I think you -really- need players who are open to unexpected plot twists, and players who don't demand control of elements that aren't theirs to control. I think everyone involved needs to be truly honest about what they do and do not want, and that in a lot of cases that can take a lot of the spice out of collaborative RP.
YMMY, but be careful.
@Hella Hey thanks for the feedback and if you have any bit of it you want to discuss I'm 100% down, no snideness, and would be keen to chat.
@faraday Yeah, my delivery doesn't help. I know this and you're welcome to say so. Regardless of my good-or-neutral intentions, my delivery often sucks ESPECIALLY when it comes to the topic of unethical people or sexual harassment/illegality in the hobby. Personal experiences and traumas, etc.
Edit: No need to mince words, here. I've been stalked, sexually harassed, threatened, and been the target of "preemptive smear campaigns by people who actually did the wrong" by a number of well-known figures in the community. I've seen people defend pedophilia RP. I've seen some downright abusive behaviors conducted against ND people, ESL people, and emotionally compromised people. In a number of these cases I chose not to share receipts because I believed speaking out would only make a spectacle out of myself as someone else's 15 minute entertainment monkey. I'm done feeling like some of those people are entitled to civility from me, especially when lack of civility seems to drive their self-esteem as they act out for others to cheer them on for.
I get spicy about some of these issues (and my delivery) because there are other personal elements at play. People lie. I guarantee you someone just read the paragraph above was nodding in agreement, because the # of people I know with similar experiences had been a recurring theme for years.
...and for the life of me, I, as a person, cannot understand an environment that "protects" one category of people for bad behavior, but then admonishes people outside of their inner circle for similar behaviors, all the while claiming the overall behavior is wrong. I believe it's all related to "protecting the # of people who are willing to roleplay with you so that you aren't lonely" due to the also common theme (in years of MUing) where I watched people refuse to defend people they knew were innocent as to avoid rocking the boat or losing RP, themselves.
Literally an HR person on Earth could explain this, why it happens, and why a retaliatory environment is filled with unwillingness to defend one's self. #/edit
But in an even-handed world, an environment where people are cheered on for mistreating others (deserved or not) for a number of biased reasons will never be an environment where the most vulnerable people will be safe, because bullying is bullying, and true fairness never includes an element of positively rewarding cruelty.
That needs to be fixed for such a forum to exist and be a positive experience, and frankly the people who will never ever ever stop rewarding themselves (and their friends) for making examples out of others and laughing about being cruel will let that happen, so long as they remain welcome on the forums and the games.
I think people should consider that before they consider that the opinion on PBs of someone who isn't even affecting their gametime to be the end-all downfall of the hobby, even if it is the kind of argument designed to be read by an admin.
@faraday here's constructive for you.
There will never be a forum for this hobby that isn't toxic, because dating way back even before WORA it was made pretty clear that when presented with two options...
We all know which one wins. People are still fighting to keep the Hog Pit open so that they can review and reread 10+ years of unethical, cruel bullshit mostly conducted by people who attack others to maintain some semblance of being "the vocal moral authority" despite mountains of unethical behavior.
What people often don't say is that the forums aren't toxic because of the admin, but because of the constant heat the admin get from these "Super ethical people" who feel the "Super ethical way" of dealing with every last annoyance is to "super ethically make public displays of what happens to those who resist." The amount of dumb peer pressure and heat these admin get, thus having to be careful if they want to to continue to partake in the hobby themselves, I'm sure is downright a pain in the ass.
This forum and others like it should absolutely be shut down, wiped, and for the better of the community (and refuse to save any data from the Hog Pit and laugh as people cry about it as if 30 family picture albums of great memories are reduced to ashes), and the community as a whole would be better if ethical people actually treated the people fighting for the right to be recreationally cruel to others like the problem they are.
But hey, we can keep at it if people want, too. All this demanding pounds of flesh didn't work 15+ years ago, so I'm sure it'll eventually stop being something that never works and only creates greater rifts and start being something that yields results.
I'm sure I'll get a third strike eventually, but the real secret is that me going away will change literally nothing except the amount of time I check reddit. It remained a cesspool 10+ years ago when <name> was ruining the community and 15 minutes later the same thing was said about a different person by the same "Super ethical majority" of people with their pitchforks and torches. They're always going to have a new target. Me? I'm just in the privileged position of being outside of truly being able to be retaliated against, and have stopped caring enough to refrain from speaking to those people like they can bully me.
But it was true back then as it is now with this community. There are simply some egos who have gotten to the point where they feel that if you incur their wrath that others deserve the mistreatment, and any HR department could tell you that the community is a quid-pro-quo environment with plenty of retaliation...so tread lightly who you "check".
This, I feel, is constructive.
Literally read the first three posts in this thread again.
I honestly (and out of boredom and no recent posts) posted a little editorial about how I personally find TS with PBs to be creepy, in the mildly constructive section of the forum no less. I think it is. Sue me. It was an opinion.
It took 3 posts before someone decided that it was about me "shaming people for their likes" (despite multiple "my opinion" and "not slut shaming" statements), and then when even a forum admin performed the first personal attacks and I stood up for myself (albeit with a snide tone) and others came in to do so as well (including people who don't even use the forum anymore), and the attacks came before any questions (that never came) like "ghost what was your intention?" or even "Hey you're coming in too hot, so before I make this combative could I ask you to tone it down?" Instead? Combative responses, personal attacks, and I was pretty grateful for that apology after someone else pointed out some of the unfairness taking place, which probably would never have happened otherwise.
I'm pretty sure all of this re-iteration of strikes or whatnot, for some, is probably more about seeing a ban happening more than any moral or ethical stance, because the level of schadenfreude some of these people have towards others is pretty disgusting. This coming from the same crowd of people who hate Derp and make jokes about how no one chats here, anymore, like they actually care.
There's just a severe film of dishonesty and "protecting friends who do bad" in the entire hobby that has persisted, and it's going to be at every forum involving this particular crowd of MU-users.
I really, constructively, wish people spent more time pushing back against the people who were the source of the issue.
And while I'm not directly attacking anyone, the simplest resolution lies in the fact that if you dislike my opinion so much that you can't refrain from being Combative or performing personal attacks, you could block me and never deal with me and spare me the time of having to sit through some explanation about how it's my fault you got ugly.
I could get hit by a bus tomorrow and not a single facet of the community's problems would skip a beat.
@faraday said in The Case Against Real PBs:
Being consistent about the enforcement of the rules. I called Gany out for being out of bounds (and they agreed!) but no mod did.
Please be careful. I wouldn't want you to face retaliation for defending someone; even if your point is valid.
@LittleLizard Who is this about? 
Regardless, the opinions of former players, including those still connected to the hobby by numerous friends who still partake, isn't without value. Not liking specific things and defending oneself when personal attacks are made isn't intentionally cruel.
I'm not for everyone! If you dislike what I <whoever this was about that isn't me otherwise you would have said so> says, I <that person> always responds well to respectful retort, and if you can't muster that I recommend you mute/ignore/block whichever person this could ever be about that surely isn't me.
Given the fact that this forum has had people banned for doxxing, stalking, and real-life threats but had a whole section that was super cool with directly gathering to laugh and make fun of specific people, analyze their real life mental faculties, and was generally okay with stalking so long as it was someone they felt was collectively unpopular....I think you can handle a negative opinion on PBs.