@marsmrsmars said in The Savage Skies - Discussion Thread:
... so they were bombing innocents, instead of beheading them? Phew. Dodged a bullet with that one, I guess.
If you're not comfortable with characters associated with a force that bombed civilians, you're going to have a really hard time with any airman or woman who comes from any WW2 participant nation.
@saosmash said in Difference between an NPC and a Staff PC?:
But if a staffer wants to create sexually themed story, there's nothing at all wrong with that, and assuming that all scenarios in which sex happens with a staff NPC are in that category is bullshit. Pretending that this is what is always happening does a disservice to like... everyone.
To me there is a meaningful distinction between sexually themed and TS which is about as wide as the difference between HBO and Porn. For instance if the King is getting a blowjob at the same time he's holding an audience with a PC, that is sexually themed but it's not TS because the scene is about the audience and not the blowjob. I don't think anyone has a problem with scenes that have explicit sexual content in appropriate context.
That said the worst staff scene experience I've ever had was when my character was sneaking into some building and the staff basically powerposed my PC giving the guard a sexual favor to get past and I was just too shocked at the fact he did that to object. To some extent that experience colors my view on sex in scenes with NPCs because if the NPC initiates it can put the players in a really awkward position.
Having one of the people whos poses you most appreciate tell you they like your writing feels really nice.
@mietze
I don't think I would call expecting your immediate family to be treated with respect and dignity a radical position.
@Runescryer said in Wheel of Time:
I like the idea of removing the 'Main Characters' so that the focus can be on the PC's. However, just playing Devil's Advocate here, that leads to another problem, IMO. If the setting and events of the WoT series are in use, someone has to be the Dragon Reborn to fight off Tarmongaiddon. So, you seem to be trading Super-Special NPC's for a group of Super-Special PC's that all the prophecies revolve around.
Just something to think about and plan around.
Depending on what you're looking for in a Wheel of Time game, you could ditch most of the apocalyptic storyline and just keep the setting, an alternative history where Tarmon Gai'don happens 100 years later.
The Witcher is so much better then I ever expected it to be. When I first read that Henry Cavill would play Geralt I didn't think he'd be able to sell it but the finished product...
He's basically perfect. He must have spent an ungodly amount of time perfecting the voice and the combat movements.
My only real complaints about the series would be that it involves a lot of jumping backwards and forwards in time and they never explain when a particular scene takes place. To spare the rest of you the same confusion, Cirilla's storyline takes place in the 'present' while Geralt and Yennifer start their stories about 30 years in the past and eventually over the course of the season Geralt and Yennifer catch up with the present.
@Quinn said in Sexuality: IC and OOC:
I'm a cisgender, straight woman and I find playing a guy pretty tricky unless I'm just going all out frat-boy stereotype as a one off NPC. I just can't get that into it and feel more comfortable playing women. I'm not sitting there constantly like "is this how guys scratch their balls? How much ball scratching should one pose have?" when I'm playing a woman. I know how many times I scratch my balls a day, people.
This is one of those things that you almost only see in those who 'crossplay'. Most guys who play guys won't put ball scratching into their poses because while that might be something they do in their daily lives it's not something they think about. If you just want to 'pass' as being the same gender as the character you're playing, all you need to do is avoid bringing attention to weird things and just focus on your characters personality/dreams/goals etc, don't try to play a 'male' or 'female' character, just play a character who happens to be male or female.
I don't think anyone reasonable would ever object to you taking a well deserved break. Whatever happens on the board, your health comes first.
I have essentially two problems with children in most MUs. The first is that many MUs tend to have a lot of mature themes that I'm not comfortable seeing children participate in, even if we disregard sex I'm not fond of seeing child characters get maimed/tortured/abused and I don't like having to deal with the possibility of a child being present in a scene where that kind of darkness can play out.
The second is that the kind of player that is likely to play a child is usually the kind of players you don't want to play a child.
I don't play on Savage Skies and I am pretty unlikely to play on Savage Skies in the near term simply because I am absolutely terrible at playing multiple characters at the same time.
However as an outside observer whos only familiarity with the game is the wiki. I really get the distinct feeling that neither @marsmrsmars nor @juneko are coming at this issue from a genuine concern of playing this game.
The premise of Savage Skies is that a group of ex-military people and civilians join the Sky Guard to fight fascists together. It should go without saying that members of an anti-fascist militia are not going to be fascists. The game also clarifies that you're not allowed to play ex-nazis and in light of this debate they added the additional clarification that all characters from authoritarian states need to be explicitly opposed to excesses, war crimes and atrocities.
As such I think it's very clear that the way this game is intended to be played is that no member of the Sky Guard is meant to be assumed to be associated with any kind of war time atrocity regardless if whatever military branch they are associated with performed those atrocities in the actual WW2. Not only are those atrocities by and large scrubbed out of this timeline but you should assume those Sky Guard characters are opposed to them happening and would presumably have found some way to avoid participating.
While it's fine to raise questions regarding how Hirohito should appropriately be handled, the game appears to be clearly set in the European theater and anything happening in Asia is only background. A background where even though the game is started in 1938, the 1937 invasion of China isn't on the timeline yet so assuming that a fellow member of the Sky Guard participated in the Nanjin Massacre comes across as somewhat ludicrous as you have no reason to think that event has even happened.
If your interpretation of someone having an RP hook about being a monarchist or communist is that they're a fascist complicit in war crimes, I don't think this kind of game is suitable for you. I honestly don't think there's anything the game staff can do that will make you happy because the game relies upon you taking the point of view that everyone in the Sky Guard are on the same side and you are actively looking for reasons to think they're not.
@A-B said in Spirit Lake - Discussion:
It occurs to me - is screaming and howling in tears OK in character, usually, in MUs? Because my role-playing characters are usually very mechanical and colourless indeed and bore me and everyone else, owing, I think, to me laboriously trying to mechanically mimic a thoroughly normal and average person with nothing particular on their mind. Hence maybe a bit of wealth redistribution wouldn't go amiss there, if you reckon there's a chance of it being OK for a character to get upset!
Being dramatic and hysterical in-character can often be seen as a good thing as long as it's appropriate and not overdone. Being dramatic and hysterical out of character is almost always seen as a bad thing because no one wants to spend their hobby time being an unpaid mental health counselor.
I will agree that MSB has had a dogpiling problem for a long time, it's part of the reason the downvote button had to be removed (the other part of the reason was people going through other peoples history and downvoting every post they've ever made).
Dealing with that sort of thing would require a lot more pro-active community management then we've had so far.
I'm finding myself neither having the drive and energy to poke people with pages for RP nor do I have any more taste for 'tavern' RP. So I just end up idling all day long checking my watchlist and where while wishing I could find it in myself to make a scene happen.
Maybe someday I'll RP again, who knows.
@clarity said in Autism and The MU* Community:
I would happily wear the same thing day after day if I could get away with it.
Who says you can't? I hate finding new clothes to wear so whenever I have to buy new clothes, I just buy lots of them in different colors and just switch color throughout the week.
Like many others in the thread I've found MU* to be a place where I can be a social in a way I have neither the energy nor ability to do elsewhere. Social cue's are more apparent and in a world of text you don't have the same countless distractions everywhere, it allows me to pretend to be socially adept.
@Sparks said in Difference between an NPC and a Staff PC?:
If someone TSes and that doesn't happen, it's not a problem. The fact that some people do get that way when they TS shouldn't mean that you ban TS, any more than the fact that some people do get that way when they encounter an RP style they really like means you should ban all good RPers.
The topic however isn't TS in general, it's a very specific form of TS in which one party is a presumably important NPC played by a member of staff and the other is a normal PC. It's not useful generalize that to all TS ever in any context.
So, no, TS isn't the problem. The actual problem is when you have someone with an OOC opinion about someone else that is so strong it is literally disruptive to gameplay in some manner, whether that manner is beneficial to the target of this feeling or not.
This is basically a tautology. Problematic behavior is problematic. Sure it is is, noone questions that. However we can do better then that, we don't have to be literally on fire to detect a fire. We can be smart enough to realize that we shouldn't hold a bonfire in the middle of a dry field that hasn't had rain for months and we can in fact figure out that some patterns of behavior are likely to lead to problematic outcomes without actually having to go through the entire process of getting there for the 500th time.
@Misadventure
The important part especially when you're dealing with artificial beings isn't the number of years the character has existed but if it presents as an adult or a child. Characters who are really young but look and behave like adults are usually not perceived as skeevy while born yesterday style characters who act like children in adult bodies can often come across as extremely skeevy especially if sex is involved. When talking about the replicants specifically they were given artificial memories which made them almost impossible to distinguish from an actual normal adult.
@Ominous said in Spirit Lake - Discussion:
I would make clear that @A-B is in no way entitled to an appeal or a reconsideration, and, if they do reach back out to Spirit Lake's staff in a few months, they should expect a 'No' reply and, if they are unable to accept a 'No' reply, they should not reach out.
That is true and while we're making excessively clear clarifications, I suppose we could make clear this goes for any kind of asking. You always need to be able to accept the answer 'No'.
@Ganymede said in Tips for not wearing out your welcome:
I am repeating because I was probably lost in whatever the fuck just happened a couple of pages before.
Why have you chosen online text-based games as a way to stave off insanity from your isolation?
Online text-based games are one of the more accessible means to learn to become better at communication and social cues. You don't have to deal with any of the difficulties of interpreting body language or the intensely difficult task of figuring out the appropriate time to speak during verbal communication or the pressure of real time communication in general.
It's one of the few places in the world where it's possible to pretend to be normal.
@Kestrel said in Cultural differences between MUDs and MUSHes:
It's pretty asinine, from an outsider's perspective, because it's totally unnecessary by the admission of everyone on this thread who's explained why it's necessary.
I think the idea that you would ask someone if you can join a scene just to be able to determine that they're an arsehole on the off chance they say 'no' is pretty weird. That seems like a person is begging to get offended. It's a social construct that makes no sense. It's inefficient. It's a waste of time.
Maybe there's a better way of doing things. Just a thought.
By that logic all politeness is a waste of time. It's a way to demonstrate that you care and sometimes it gives you valuable information such as the fact that the scene is about to end or move somewhere else or is actually bubbled (Means the scene isn't taking place at the current time but rather a time to be determined when resolved).
Most people that play on MUSH train themselves to avoid people who are impolite since they've learned by experience that saves them a lot of drama and headache in the long run.
@Kestrel said in Cultural differences between MUDs and MUSHes:
Regarding the simulationism though, I actually don't know whether MUDs or MUSHes are worse. Yes, MUDs are simulationist, but I feel like MUSHers tend to have less IC/OOC separation. The ability to control what kind of RP you're involved in to such a high degree allows for a lot more wish-fulfillment and, IMHO, isn't healthy. It is a lot easier to be a Mary-Sue on a MUSH, because if you don't want to, you never have to expose yourself to anyone who would rain on your parade. See also my bafflement on this thread. It weirds me out that people would strictly arrange for and only play out perfect relationships, even perfect friendships, or expect other players to alter their characters' normal behaviour to minimise conflict. But, I intend to follow the advice others have given on this thread about self-selection (ironically), so hopefully I won't have to deal with this too much.
While people arranging perfect relationships/friendships is something you could naively expect people to do with the level of communication present in MUSH, that's actually fairly uncommon.
What most people work hardest to arrange OOCly are abusive relationships and antagonistic relationships. It's been my impression that most MUSH players want IC conflict however they don't want the OOC drama and escalation that often comes hand to hand in it so they end up very shy unless things are OOCly worked out beforehand.
@faraday said in Cultural differences between MUDs and MUSHes:
I was thinking about that statement of yours though, and you may be interested to know that the desire for OOC communication and accommodation is not always based around wish fulfillment or stuff like that. Sometimes it's actually motivated by wanting to put IC first. Here’s an example similar to yours:
The basic principle is that most MUSH players are uncomfortable with the idea of their OOC circumstances having IC consequences for their character. They don't want their character to be considered a bad doctor because they happened to be unavailable when someone got hurt, they don't want their character to be considered anti-social just because events are scheduled when they're asleep etc.
Usually to accommodate this most MUSHes have a flexible concept of time, they'll often pause the scene and wait for the doctor to come online and proceed to pretend the doctor was there all along or if that is logistically inconvenient, they might fade the entire doctor scene and assume the doctor was around to fix B up, picking up afterwards.