Best posts made by Gingerlily

I mean, theoretically, because now she is ignoring me to watch Peppa Pig, but I ASKED her if she wanted to go outside to the park.

@macha said in Character 'types':

I stopped trying to play/create male characters. I just always felt like I wasn't quite 'there' with those, no matter what those around me said.

Whenever I play a male character, including playing male NPCs on games where I have staffed, no matter what background or personality I write for them...they turn out to all be asshole frat boys. I'd probably need a therapist to help me figure out why that is, but meh.

I don't play male characters anymore.

My ADHD fun today.

There are three post-its on my desk. They all have phone numbers. One has an asterisk to remind me...a thing?

I have no idea what the numbers are for because of course I did not write names, or reasons, or any words or letters at all. One just has an asterisk to signify it from the rest.

I do remember exactly what I was thinking when I wrote down each of those numbers though.

@Sunny

I have actually been on a game where a player had so much beef with me that she would literally page half the people who played in rooms alone with my character with 'why are you playing with HER." and other passive aggressive comments that weren't 'quite' harassment and yet made it so people would either always want their unfindable flags on when they were alone with me, or just avoided playing with me because her grief was so intense. That said I am STILL in favor of no unfindable flag in public places. If those players didn't feel like telling her to buzz off but wanted to hide instead, we'd just have to go hide together somewhere alone instead of having a perfectly reasonable sensible conversation in a public place.

And yeah eventually she got booted for harassment. Would have been sooner except I am also staff, and so I felt like I should tolerate more than I would for my players, but eventually enough is enough for anyone. You can write up long, elaborate rules for what 'harassment' is, but ultimately if you systematically are incapable of treating others how you wish to be treated yourself, you need a less social hobby.

@Auspice

I also remember that one number someone said to me aloud in person, one someone said on the phone, and another one I copied from somewhere else. It's like I'm the star of my own mystery!

To give a more thorough response, I feel like it really depends. Clearly some people here have been burned and are responding to that and i get it, but I think any people who pair up whether they are roomates or irl best buddies or just online pals who game together often and like to go into MU*es with paired concepts and then run wild can either be fun or a problem. The issue is often how much OOC info is shared, and how much of the game is 'played' OOC vs IC, and I don't think that has much to do with who is a couple real life or not.

My husband and I play on MU*es together sometime, though he is a far more casual player than I. He and I also both come from a MUD background and he is slower to move on to the MUSH culture of sharing -anything- OOC, even the stuff that everybody shares, so for us it really isn't a problem. He gets PISSED at me when I try to discuss with him even the most benign details of game plots or plans or ideas for doing something cool OOC. I can't even tell him funny stories that have nothing to do with anything if they happened on the game and are "IC Information' as he dubs it. We have in the past played against each other and enjoyed the heck out of it, and also sometimes play on the same 'team' with some kind of connection or other. It really ends up being no big deal, no more influential than playing with a friend who I have never met.

Relationship RP with other people when we play is no big deal either, unless the other party (the text one) gets weird in some fashion, like there was a time some girl his character was in a relationship with yelled at him because he wasn't online when he said he would be to rp relationship fun with her because he'd spontaneously decided to take his in the flesh wife on a date. That kind of fluke aside, it's been pretty easy though.

If people are going to be weird, I think it doesn't matter what their relationship to one another is. They'll be jerks anyhow.

This video is important and if you watch it to the end you will be happier inside.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PnbKL3wuH4

@Kanye-Qwest I have never been good at games

@Ghost

Unlike most of the 'horror stories' posted around MU Soapbox (the kinds about curseword fights with mean staff/obnoxious players/nasty cliques) this is an actual, legit horror story. My reaction upon reading it is horror, terror for that girl, horror for you that you had to even be a witness to that disgusting, terrible, ugh ugh ugh ew situation.

Legit horror right here, it made my stomach twist. If I were that girl's parents that GM would have been in a courtroom so fast. No no no.

@Jaded

This is just an advertisement for gun control. Another nope.

Also the only times I ever played LARPs were either with a group in College Park that was very cool and very normal and who I am mostly good friends with still today, or more privately set up games by many of these same people over a couple of weekends at peoples houses. The games were all very well done, some of my best gaming fun memories though I was but a wee college lass, and nothing even close to horrible or terrifying ever occurred.

I guess once I saw a super cute guy I kind of liked in highschool at one of the food places when we were on a break for snacks and I was in my super cool late 90's vampire costume, and he gave me an odd look and asked "Are you here with Xperson and Yperson doing that DnD or something game they do?' I shrugged and said "I guess so" and then fled. "I guess so" which was super chill because of the tag I was wearing with my char name and visible stats, and the fact that I was all velvet and leather on a Friday but not leaving campus. So smoooooth.

@Ganymede said in MU Things I Love:

MU Things I love? The people. I'm constantly amazed.

That post was fantastic. It warmed my heart. Sometimes Soapbox leaves me feeling really shitty and I wonder about whether I should be reading it at all. I want to learn more so I keep at it, but that was beautiful and made me look at this 'community' in the way I've wanted to. Trashing each other is tempting, the dopamine rush of bonding with someone over stuff that is horrible is undeniable. Going out of your way to say wonderful things to people doesn't come with that sweet hit, but it was just lovely. Thanks for doing it.

@2mspris

Yeah my best friend is a granola gal who does not allow her children to drink juice (too sugary) nor have any screentime during the week. They watch a family movie on the weekends. She knows how much my kid is allowed and has never -said- anything to me but I can read a shocked expression when I see one.

Still both she and I have advanced degrees in teaching and child development, so criticizing each other's parenting would never happen.

There is an amazing book called "Smarter Than You Think" by Clive Thompson and it puts a whole new perspective on 'screen time' and the stigma it has and whether it should. Highly recommend.

@Ganymede said in Politics etc.:

@ThatGuyThere said in Politics etc.:

While politics were cutthroat on an IC level, on an OOC level the player base was probably the most welcoming, friendly and outgoing group of folks I have ever run into on a WoD game. They went out of their way to help newbies get involved and feel important, because influences were important I was recruited to help on a plot the first week I was on grid, and even received IC credit for what my char did, as a new player to the game that made me really feel like it mattered that I was around.

That is really important and sometimes seems so much harder than it should be. Finding players who enjoy playing in ways where they challenge one another or compete IC but are friendly and inclusive OOC. Some of what @lordbelh mentioned about having things in place so that this Char against Char rp allows for ways to de-escalate and for multiple means of exploration and also where the system is robust enough Char v Char doesn't become just player OOC pride probably makes all the difference.

That's because a good economy system, which the game had, made it more advantageous to have a lot of friends than to have a lot of enemies. If you wanted to get involved in the politics, you had to be friendly OOC; it was very easy to become a pariah.

At a minimum, you had to be involved politically. The system required it; the game enforced it. And that system generated an awful lot of RP because no one person could run or rule the place. It was literally impossible to do, based on the number of players and how it was set up. If you wanted to get far, you had to have allies; if you wanted allies, you had to get new players into the game.

The trick of it seems to be finding a system that isn't too cumbersome/doesn't feel like a grind, and yet also fosters all of those things people seemed to love so much. Balance etc, but it's not yet clear to me where that balance lies.

Thanks for all these great ideas. Just a philosophical exercise for me at this point, but one that I am enjoying.

@2mspris

Yes yes. And while the 'Smarter Than you Think' book isn't just about games and gamers, (that's just one chapter, the rest is about technology effecting society in other ways, but all of it fascinating and useful and backed up by scientific studies) It does spend a -lot- of time discussing the 'down with screentime' mentality that pediatricians and teachers (some, not me!) and parenting blogs, and how they are not necessarily based in truth.

Obviously children need time actually playing with toys, and friends, and outdoors. But that does not mean that screen time isn't ever acceptable of even valuable. The games around presently are not the original Nintendos we were raised pounding the controllers on. They require strategic thinking, planning, comprehension skills, and so much more. And I'm not talking games marketed as 'educational'. I'm talking your regular rpg or Minecraft and all that. Just games. My daughter blows my mind with the elaborate stuff she builds on Minecraft, her visual-spatial skills are on point, I don't think I could make stuff that neat if I tried and she's 8. And yeah sure, she could build stuff with legos, but legos can actually be super frustrating as a fine motor task and lose their appeal from that.

When they get old enough to actually start messing with code...I mean wow. It's fantastic.

So yeah, I'm a primary educator with 15 years of experience and certifications in early childhood and English language learning and special education...and I am totally good with screen time. So long as once in a while they get some Vitamin D from the sun, and hit the playground to keep their physical health handled...screen away.

I think the people who really dislike MSB and think it is a net negative will not see this thread so they will never comment @Arkandel. There are many people in that camp who still MU* and/or still talk frequently to other people who MU* but there's not really a way to get their input here, so the thread will likely conclude at least in part that MSB is a good thing.

I'm neutral towards it myself. Sometimes I have enjoyed participating in conversations or just reading them, other times I have thought "I need to stop reading that forum, all it does is make me (negative emotion goes here.)" Thus far I still read it, but only when I am in particular moods, and I choose to avoid some sections sometimes. On a scale of 1-10 if the question was "How beneficial is MSB to the activity of MU* gaming I'd give it a solid 5. I am aware other people's ratings vary deeply in both directions.

I know you and I (the you being Ark again) have discussed at length and in some detail your opinions and my opinions and that was kind of where I ended up then too. I support many of your theories as to why it is or has the potential to be valuable, but am not sold enough to buy stock.

Woot to 'Smarter Than You Think' I hope you both love it. We can have a book club thread when you are finished reading. There's a lot of cool stuff in there.

@Arkandel said in MSB: The meta-discussion:

There are people who dislike MSB for completely honorable reasons. They want their gaming experience to be about only the fun parts, or they'd rather not peek behind the mirror, or simply think we're full of shit; I have nothing against those folks, and I'd never try to convince them otherwise. To each their own.

And there are people who don't like the fact we might speak less than kindly of their actions here; well, perhaps they shouldn't be acting in a way that might be spoken of that way. That's not on MSB.

Gotta say that here is the point that I definitely don't agree with. There are people who have been treated horribly on MSB. There are people who clearly get some enjoyment out of treating others horribly on MSB. Is that on MSB in that it is the moderator's fault, or everybody's fault who ever contributes to MSB? Nah, but it's still a part of what MSB is. People are regularly nasty to other people for various and sundry reasons, and it is not always or even mostly connected to the concept of righteously exposing wrongdoing that others might be informed. Honest analysis of what happens on the entirety of this forum cannot deny that truth or it is not any kind of honest analysis.