Posts made by Ghost

@Sunny said in Our Tendency Towards Absolutes:

@Ghost said in Our Tendency Towards Absolutes:

I was just offering my perspective and my feeling about the absolutism topic and why I think it's a thing. I may be wrong, I may be onto something, but I'm 100% willing to help mend issues and not being shitty about it.

I think that if it were on games like you're referring to here, it would be a huge problem. I think that what you are talking about is bad, and wrong, and if it is happening somewhere or someone is doing it than everyone involved should stop. Don't get me wrong, what you're positing is TERRIBLE.

It just isn't happening? You're suggesting a solution without a problem.

We can agree to disagree, but personally...I disagree with you. I believe that there absolutely is a problem and that some people are constantly poised to write each other off, which is sad to me. I think pretty regularly we have Hog Pit stuff about how X person did this for Y reason, but then it turns out to be a misunderstanding. This isnt the behavior of a group of people with a lot of respect for each other.

You don't have to agree with me, and that's okay. It's just my take on it.

@Sunny said in Our Tendency Towards Absolutes:

This doesn't happen to the extent you appear to think it does.
ETA: I have not had to do a balancing thing like that for at least 10 years. Not once.

Fair enough. Not gonna fight ya on it. If that's your experience, then that's your experience.

I was just offering my perspective and my feeling about the absolutism topic and why I think it's a thing. I may be wrong, I may be onto something, but I'm 100% willing to help mend issues and not being shitty about it.

@Wretched cuz there's people I like talking to, and I'm not gone so far that I can't contribute to conversations. And OMG STAHP.

MOAR fingergunz for my people. You know who you are

@Tinuviel said in Our Tendency Towards Absolutes:

Anyone that holds shit said here (that isn't particularly heinous) against people out in the wild is in for a world of surprise. We all disagree, sometimes loudly, about all kinds of things. Doesn't mean we hate each other.

You're really late to the party, @Ghost.

Handwobble. Maybe.

But I don't sense a whole lot of love, either.

@Sunny said in Our Tendency Towards Absolutes:

What mutually assured destruction stuff?
No, seriously?

To be clear, I wasnt being accusatory to anyone, so with that in mind, I'll clarify.

I mean the whole "X player doesn't play with Y player for this reason, Y doesn't play with players A C T V and X". For whatever reason it is, there's a lot of players with undisclosed/disclosed ooc issues with each other that can result in:

"X player can play with A M and F so long as U and T are there, but O doesn't like M, so they don't want M coming to events, even if M and F are both friends with O..."

I think on a long enough timeline, everyone is gonna have some kind of issue with enough people that you're gonna feel like the environment is polluted.

@faraday said in Difference between an NPC and a Staff PC?:

Man. I can't even reliably get non-TS romantic RP with people who don't get OOCly weird about it. Kinda jealous.

@saosmash is right. They're out there.

...
...
...

And some of them have quit the hobby, too.

fingergunz4everyone

@faraday said in Difference between an NPC and a Staff PC?:

What I do pledge, though, is to "provide a sane, fair and friendly environment for you to tell your stories." Part of that fairness means ensuring that Fred has the same opportunities for success as my BFF Mary. I do not need to RP with him to do this. Off-camera scenes and +rolls are a thing for this very reason.

Warm fuzzies. You're a good one. You say it and you do it.

@saosmash said in Difference between an NPC and a Staff PC?:

Like, I've literally been doing this for 20 years and have consistently been able to have sex RP with sane partners who didn't get weird OOC about it

I...definitely don't have that kind of success rate in my RL relationships.

Because damn.

damn.

Like...

god damn

I'm gonna weigh in since I'm apparently Mr Opinion tonight in the StaffNPC thread.

I thiiiiink... (Metaphor time)

...If I walked into a club in high school and saw a room this divided, I'd back out.

Sally won't play with Fred because he's a psycho. Bill told a lie about having an extra ticket to a movie in sophomore year so Jake refuses to play chess with him. These people over here believe they do it right and everyone else is a fucking idiot. Everyone else feels they do it right and those people over there are fucking idiots. If you come to the club and dont behave one way then these 4 people won't talk to you ever again, but if you role play their way, another 4 people won't talk to you ever again, either.

I think recognizing the problem is the first step.

And I think that problem is identifying the fact that many of you simply don't like each other as much as you pretend to, and that years of infighting and bad memories with each other have made for one large, dysfunctional family.

I think that this MILDLY CONSTRUCTIVE board should be the anti-Hog Pit. Use it to build each other up and find your common ground again. For fuck's sake LAY OFF THE HOG PIT SO MUCH; it's only driving divisive wedges and aiding in this neverending melodrama of who's in this season and who's out.

What was it, 3 or 4 years ago? I called someone a cunt here and it snapped in me that this isn't who I am. So I just...stopped calling people names and am doing my best to not be cruel. We may disagree, you may not like my wording or ideas, but I will not be cruel. You may not like me, we may not always be in sync, but I want people to rely on me to not be mean, to be willing to listen to new ideas, and give them the benefit of the doubt that I don't have any fucking clue who they actually are as people, but whoever that is deserves a chance.

Even @Kanye-Qwest ...who I argue with but refuse to be cruel to, because I just don't want that anymore.

People talk a lot about blacklisting people, and other people live in fear of being blacklisted from games. Games and groups of players become secular. The people who try to be so inviting often struggle against near constant ooc issues to moderate at staff, mostly because people fight, sometimes over petty differences.

For many of you, this group is five to seven hours, five to seven days a week. Some of you talk to each other more than coworkers, and some of you talk to each other more than family.

If you guys want your hobby to be something awesome, then you have got to make a concerted effort to identify where you may be damaging others, and how you can find common ground to untangle the mess of cords behind the television.

If you don't actively start talking to each other with building something better in mind, then this hobby is always going to be a constant train of "I love it, but they're ruining it for me, so fuck them" from both sides of the room.

So, seriously, this mutually assured destruction stuff is actually making the hobby harder for you all. I dont know what the absolute answer is, but I have buried the hatchet with some people I had some major issues with and things are going well. It feels good. Maybe it's time to work on that, and working out how to start communicating with each other.

@Auspice I appreciate it.

I believe that sometimes people are in sync, and sometimes they're not. I believe that even though you and I had a falling out that we could still write scenes together and help each other get what we came for: A not fucking boring night.

At some point I felt like it was the OOC contact that made this hobby more difficult than it needed to be, and I wanted to just...try it without YOU being Auspice and ME being Ghost.

I think it was a good experiment before I gave up the hobby. I'm glad we reconnected. I just wanted to find some way of going: "Yanno what? Shit gets stupid. People spread rumors, get these theories, there's drama between people, but maybe if there was a way to minimize that then myself and the people I RP with might have more fun (or at the very least less worry about each other)"

I'm gonna step in with "Oh come the fuck on, really?" voice, but before I so so, I want to make it clear this isn't an attack, nor am I trying to shame anybody. Please read this like Tarantino over beers. If you actually knew me, you'd get my language. But...

Oh come the fuck on, really?

When you're a staffer, you may have your favorites, but you've got to remain mostly impartial when it comes to keeping the game going. Sure, some people might be way more boring than others, but they're all coming yo your game for fun. For all you know they LOVE your game, are ESL, have trouble getting out of their shell, and your game might help them.

There's nothing wrong with thinking someone is boring, but in all fairness when it comes to the myriad of creepers, snobby assholes, and people who try to cheat the system, I'm suggesting that no one ever suggests nixing boring people who are nice people.

Maybe this is better at the absolutism thread, but over the last decade I've heard a lot of "this guy is boring" and "I hate how this person poses" and "they say YOU instead of HER". I, myself, was guilty of avoiding people who didn't meet some invisible bar I'd set for what was considered good writing, but I think many of us do/have done this.

What ever happened to "Hey <insert name of boring player>, I had an idea to make this RP more exciting, are you interested?" or "Hosting an OOC event on how to write or make interesting poses"?

I just...feel on a human level that there's so much quick judgment about players that we have often forgotten that we might actually be able go build each other up instead of break each other down, or at the very least be more welcoming to boring players because maybe with some effort they could be really great, or great friends, or decent code people.

I know it wasn't what was said (or said as an actual suggestion), but my empathy brain read "boring people deserve staff time less than exciting people, so should we ask boring people to leave?" and some part of me thought: "Fuck, that is one thing that is SO wrong about some people in this hobby: its either ON or OFF, YES or NO, COOL or SHIT, and it seems that it's just rare to hear: how can we support these people, especially if they're NICE people?"

Back before I hung up the hobby, I outright roleplayed with people I had bad OOC history/communication with because I realized that everyone is coming to these games for the same reason: to be creative. I don't have to be everyone's bestie to do that, but I can be supportive of the effort as a whole and if someone and I don't get along great Oocly? That's fine. We can still do stories and keep the pages to a minimum.

Anyway.

I don't mean to derail from the OP's topic, but this just kinda struck a nerve in me and I wanted to type it out before I lost it. I don't mean to get all Hippie about it, but fuuuuuuuuck, yanno? So much breaking people down, and not enough building people up.

I hope one day to see this. I really do.

@Auspice said in RL Anger:

@Wretched said in RL Anger:

@Ghost Theres all sorts of moaning coming from the basement!

DONT COME IN HERE!

knowing what I do of Ghost's SO...

...those would be moans of pain as someone was separated from their genitalia.

She gives it back when she's done with it.

I love my tattooed barbarianess

@Wretched said in RL Anger:

@Ghost Theres all sorts of moaning coming from the basement!

DONT COME IN HERE!

"DON'T COME DOWNSTAIRS! WE'RE TRYING TO COAX THEM INTO MATERIALIZING BY MAKING GHOST NOISES."

(MY s.o. as I told her about needing to be separated: "True...true...")

Shit. Maybe I should start a ghost hunting group for uh...scientific reasons.

@Wretched Me, too. Though I'd have to separate my SO and I because the moment they send us down into a creepy basement together we're gonna violate rule 1-3 of surviving a horror movie.

AND I WAS KIND OF LOOKING FORWARD TO THAT.

UFO STUFF UPDATE

Talked to friend who didn't make it to the dinner party. He thought it was going to be about being GHOSTFACERS at B&Bs, too; not about psychic communication whatsomathingers.

He's not into it, either, and he's gonna nope out, too.

Big sigh of relief, there.

@Groth Once I made the mistake of giving my phone number out to a staffer.

He called repeatedly on random nights asking me to log on and role play (TS) with his wife. When I tried to get away, they nuked my character.

Gotta get away from this thread, now. I'm hearing this creepy classical music and if I don't put this box down, it's gonna open.

But I'm gonna hard stop on this line of thinking, because, you know...

"Human dreams... such fertile ground for the seeds of torment."

@Pandora said in Difference between an NPC and a Staff PC?:

What is the difference between writing good text sex and getting a staffer's love and attention, or writing good combat text and getting a staffer's love and attention, or writing good adventuring text and getting a staffer's love and attention?
This obsession with TS like it is some unholy grail of moral depravity is crazy levels of shaming.

Eh, I'm fairly sex-positive and don't care who does what. People wanna TS? Go for it. People wanna TS non-vanilla stuff? Go for it.

It's probably a better conversation for a different thread (so I won't derail here), but I think the answer to your question lies in some very unspoken opinions in the community that may be based in the opinion-holder's own little guilty secrets.

(In other words, I dont think the obsession with TS as depravity/moral issue is actual that at all. I think almost everyone is TSing, and as a byproduct of perhaps a history of securing benefit through TS, worries that IC romance may have compromised them Oocly, and jealousy related to not being chosen for IC romance over another player (or the assumption that players choose players for TS which is a wtf minefield) drive the witch hunt for TS and favoritism.)

But that's just a theory. Cheaters like to accuse of cheating.

@saosmash I agree with your points.

My argument isn't about right/wrong, it's about whether or not it could result in unfair bias. That's all. I got on this BOOM train or whatever (mostly because I love posting Always Sunny gifs) because I think there is definitely a potential currency in play that is a quid-pro-quo danger zone.

@Sunny said in Difference between an NPC and a Staff PC?:

@Ghost said in Difference between an NPC and a Staff PC?:

...could establishing an Oocly titilating line of roleplay with a staffer result in preferential treatment than others don't have access to?

Yes! It could. But I feel that what should happen in this circumstance is that the unethical staffer -- and that's what they are -- should be fired. Not removing an element from roleplay. Because what they are doing is the worst kind (to me, that part is an opinion) of abuse.

I dont think you're wrong.

I mean, I'm sure people try to offer sex to get out of a speeding ticket from time to time, and you should rely on your sworn officer to not abuse their authority/duty for gain. It's not so different a concept.

If I found out a GM were drifting benefits to their TS partners via NPCs that they weren't giving to others, I'd front-punt them off the server.