Best posts made by hobos

@devrex

I have to agree with that assessment, based on what I've seen here. There looks to have been a period where the admin were silencing posters just because they wanted people to be quiet while they deliberated. This wasn't respected, but that period is passed, and now people are saying they are afraid to talk, while the only limitations on what you can say are.... to at least try to be courteous while saying it. There's no need to be afraid to talk, @RightMeow.

I have examined my own feelings and I definitely feel like I can post more now that the main people who would bring up my past mistakes and mock me no matter what I said or how irrelevant it was are no longer posting here. Now I almost think I need to make a forum signature that says 'watch out I'm a terrible code-abusing person' because my posts don't always have sassy little replies that bring it up. Seriously I'm feeling a strange void and it makes me a little guilty.

This 'pseudo-dating' perspective is primarily why I really prefer not TS'ing. I'm really inclined to agree with Ghost's views here, based on my own experiences and reflections.

Recently I roleplayed an IC romance that was really great. It was like, started off work buddies, became enemies swiftly, started semi-tolerating each other but with a lot of peeves and digs, started growing some forbidden romance sorts of feelings (they were different races, but with a lot of repressed racist problems in a very racist society, one was a half-elf and one was a human) and finally all bubbled up into a situation where the other character was changing into her armor and my character followed and I engaged a FTB. They continued with this secret fling for a while, entertained thoughts of eloping, struggled with birth control, confessed to close friends, and eventually died for each other in a very tragic fashion. Later, after their deaths, I finally reached out to the player behind the character... and they confessed that they was sort of taken aback by that FTB, because they would typically write these things out. I explained how I felt about it and how in the past I'd had boundary issues and how I didn't like all the drama. They agreed, told me some really terrible and cringy stories about their own experiences (including someone who was very obviously typing one-handed and made every attempt to flaunt it), and we moved on easily as gaming friends.

So, you really don't need to TS to play out fun IC romantic writing. Cerebral, heartstring-pulling stories don't require graphic erotica, even if they are romantic stories. IC romance does not equal TS at all.

@Hella

I know. You have never encouraged me to defend you, regardless of what people say or think. You're right; people will believe whatever, and it's okay. There's enough room on the planet and on the internet for everybody.

It is pretty weird to see people actually encouraging 'hey, you can just start over at a place and pretend to be someone else' right here right now though.

@Kestrel

;Harassing' is now apparently 'lightly defending a person who was accused of predatory behavior while predatory behavior was actually done to her' ... kind of like Amber Heard, since you mentioned her. I haven't been following the trial. But I was just camping at a family reunion a while back, and people started talking all the usual crap about her and then acting like I was crazy for going to bat for her based solely on the power dynamics involved. They kept bringing up all the nasty things she supposedly did and so on and so forth and I kept saying they weren't relevant to whether or not she was allowed to say in an internet article that she was a victim of domestic abuse. Power dynamics are relevant, and her ex-spouse is more powerful than her in a variety of ways -- the most obvious of which is popularity.

Anyway I'm... so tired of this. What I've been trying to do in this thread (since my original plea for impartiality from everyone involved was largely ignored in favor of debating whether or not someone is a sexual predator for sending an email to a person he had no idea wouldn't appreciate an email) ... has been this: to outline exactly how easy it is to paint people with unfavorable rumors in a way that is unfair and untrue, just based on who is or is not in the dominant friendship circle.

For my part, regarding any rumors that anyone might be worried about, I have not spread any rumors. I don't even spread them in private, okay? It is none of my business and it is unnecessary and I am not even 100% sure about them. I am not engaging in any nasty little social assassination games; I am trying to speak against those games and shed light on how harmful they are.

And you know what... I am looking at Apos' policy of excluding people based on discomfort caused to the community, and thinking about this some more, and...

It's perfectly fine. The near-opposite of impartial, really, but -- if that is what it takes for people established in a community to feel safe and happy, then it is well within their rights. Safety is a human need and there is so precious little of it in the world for most of us, that it is actually commendable to have created a pocket of the internet where some people feel safe. Play the social assassination games if that's what you need to do. Maybe as a global society, we will eventually grow out of the many other negative 'isms' that make insular tribalism feel necessary as a defense of our basic human need for safety.

@Misadventure said in MU* Mystery RP:

Two extreme opposite approaches can be described:

• There is a specific set of clues and information to reveal a specific "solution"
• Player brainstorming is used to formulate the "solution" behind the scenes

Does one approach appeal more when you are a player vs a staffer/ST?

One approach appeals to me so much more than the other, and that is that the GM has already built out the world and whatever happened has already happened. The clues and evidence laid out in the world can bring players organically to the solution.

Other thoughts:
Should players be allowed to fail in finding the "solution"? (this could happen for both extremes)

Definitely. Although I think sometimes staff can add in new information that can help guide players on the right track, if they want to, but failures should be definitely possible, even multiple failures in a row.

Does player mental engagement matter have value vs creating dramatic/engaging/amusing scenes ? Meaning what's the worth of actually thinking things through vs posing whatever is enjoyable? No, no one needs to present real world expertise for verisimilitude.

For a mystery plot, how is it fun if there is no mental engagement? That's how I feel at least, and I love mysteries. The thing I love most about them is genuinely trying to figure them out. I think it's actually even better if you can pick up some new facts in terms of real world expertise when it comes to trying to figure out your mystery. A TV show where they get all the forensics details wrong doesn't appeal to me much. Of course it doesn't have to be as hardcore and tedious as it might be IRL, but it's nice to learn things and have a high level of believability to a plot.

Does some level of verisimilitude matter, or is entertainment enough? What if entertaining is expected to result in optimal outcomes without significant relationship to those results?

A nice amount of verisimilitude makes things entertaining for me. Due to the limitations of the medium, it's of course necessary to suspend disbelief about some things, and kind of gloss over other things. But in general, verisimilitude is nice.

I love putting together puzzle pieces myself, but it would seem a bit meaningless if all the puzzle pieces were perfect black squares and once I had lined up a certain amount of them in rows, someone would generate an AI art image onto the section I had lined up. And then I'd line up more perfect black squares and the image would just get generated a little more.

Maybe that makes it relatively simple for game-running but it takes like 75% of the fun out of it, for me. The only fun left is writing and acting dramatic. That might be good for Social type players but I usually get Explorer on the Bartle-type quizzes.

In a MUD I played for a while, there was this one player who didn't seem to care at all about their characters, just like you describe, tooters.

It was RPI and there were strict rules about revealing players-behind-characters and all that, and maybe ~60 active players or so, in different spheres of the game that didn't interact that much... but I could always tell this player's characters within like the first twenty minutes of interacting with them. They were all ridiculous antagonists who always tried weird metagamey ways to get under my skin, and the skin of others. I say metagamey because it wasn't strictly IC, but it was borderline enough not to get caught in the rules. Like, let's say your character had a very close friend named Finn, who died tragically. This person would know that, and then later create a character, stroll up to yours, and be like "Hi, my name is Finn". Or let's say your character knew a famous outlaw and was part of an outlaw group. This guy would create a character and come tell your character (who the player OOCly knows is currently friends with Famous Outlaw) and be like, "Oh yeah, I was there ten years ago when Famous Outlaw was escaping Famous City... the guards surrounded him and killed him. I saw him die."

So this player, right... I later find them go on an OOC rant about how "long-lived" characters have players that are "OOCly-invested in staying alive" and all gang up together with other longer-lived characters.. and basically, to this person, the game was full of a bunch of dinosaurs who were against engaging in any sort of conflict or interesting plots, for fear of character death.

Meanwhile, this person's idea of 'interesting plots' was creating a character who was insane, bulling into an ongoing territorial conflict betwen warring tribes, and telling a bunch of crazy lies in order to get one of the player's frequent antagonist targets (Famous Outlaw) in trouble.

Long story short, I'd much prefer to play with people who care about their characters and care about the stories they're telling, than someone who will cycle psychopathically through a whole series of characters while not caring about them at all.

Let me just tell you I freaking love Famous Outlaw. I loved Famous Outlaw so much that if Famous Outlaw died I would not play the game anymore. Famous Outlaw wasn't even my character but they was inspiring and wonderful. Eventually I sort of quit this game because Probable Psychopath's brand new 80-year-old character met a dramatic death on the highway... while completely unrealistically attempting to get my character's best friend killed. After that I just couldn't handle how stupid the game was anymore, and the fact that Probable Psychopath was playing in a perfectly reasonable way considering how the game worked.

Sometimes I still think about Famous Outlaw and am real-life inspired by things that Famous Outlaw said. Famous Outlaw pulled on my heartstrings forever. Famous Outlaw is a fantasy character in a fantasy world but perfectly meaningful to me.

I don't think Kestrel called anyone a fascist, just a phony. I appreciated the rest of the post. Obviously Cullen is someone to really look out for.

If someone is trying to take on-game, mechanically-logged information to another medium in order to coerce other types personal information out of someone, I'd actually consider that very deserving of report. A pattern of that kind of behavior seems likely to indicate an abuser.

I agree with Devrex's last paragraph (maybe biasedly); I think it's actually relatively simple to distinguish between people who are truly predators and just someone people don't like, as long as a culture of 'I don't like that person, they did some questionable things, they're probably a rapist' is not encouraged.

If you're dealing with some behavior that you're not really certain of and you want to talk about it with the community to see if you're being gaslit, you can always do it without naming names and throwing out casual offhanded accusations. After a report is made and investigation done with the evidence, then it makes more sense to name people. But a culture of weak accusations doesn't make strong accusations carry more weight in any way, it actually does the opposite and provokes the kind of push-back that will end up heartening actual abusers.

@Warma-Sheen said in What Would it Take to Repair the Community?:

@hobos You don't have to pretend to be someone else. You can still be you. You just distance yourself from your past by not announcing yourself as having played X, Y, or Z characters. It isn't that foreign of a concept.

I've done it. It wasn't that difficult for me. People did not like my style of playing when I first started. I changed my views and moved forward without having to worry about the people with the torches and pitchforks who thought I was a horrible human person because I had a different perspective on how funtimes game should be played years and years ago.

But regardless of all that, I definitely prefer an outlet that encourages people to change for the better and grow.

This makes sense as long as nobody finds out who you are and gets upset about it. I don't feel like it's right to cozy up to people who don't like me under a different screen name, but that might be some personal itchy problem of my own.

@lotherio

I'd love to tell you, but like I said, the game has pretty strict rules about talking OOC regarding IC things... but just imagine this absolute rage machine, this monster bred for enslaved destruction in a completely terrible and corrupt world. And then imagine that he studied his oppressors, escaped, eventually found zen, and became the biggest and strongest force for kindness and thoughtfulness that you could conceptualize in such a crappy universe.

I mean, it's understandable why such a story would resonate with anyone in real life. And when stories resonate and have meaning, there's always degrees of emotional attachment. My thoughts are that if someone's telling a story that resonates, it will have meaning and emotional investment, and the characters involved won't just be narrator tools that get tossed aside without any sort of caring.

@Ghost

I'm pretty sour myself right now because my hope that this forum was going to be a fairer and nicer place has been pretty much dashed on the rocks by this discussion, if a moderator is accusing someone without receipts. It just becomes the mirror opposite of BMD, where I do not go anyway.

And I guess a mirror opposite should exist, for people who have been unfairly treated by the gang there, like Macha.

But it has become obvious that MSB is not actually trying to do better, it is just another MU gang that has different perspectives but acts the exact same way.

@Ghost said in MUers in the news?:

I kind of "set-and-forget" this post I made and came back to all of this. I wrote a long, dumb post trying to explain something.

But there's really no explaining this to someone with a history of "lol'ing" using the term negerboll and posts stuff like this:

Tweet

This article pretty much spells out the futility in trying to convince someone to act appropriately.

Don't racelock your games, people. It's uncouth.

Ugh after reading more about this now I feel disgusted that I came to their defense.

I guess the debate is about whether Nymeria is really just a stickler for canon or actually a racist. Looking at the history posted by Ghost and the other points made, I think the conclusion is obvious and she is a racist. Everyone's a little bit racist deep inside, so maybe that's forgiveable if she wanted to work on herself. But obviously she is just doubling down.

If anyone cares they could probably try to storm twitter about it. Neil Gaiman is going to be in real proximity to GRRM soon (Oct 27th) and I'm fairly sure another celebrated author's advice would go much further than the influence of a couple racist ghostwriters. So the time to make petitions and write letters and so on is probably now. I guess even though I started reading ASOIAF when I was 12 at my local library, I just don't care enough to go to any real effort to save people from turning a fantasy franchise into a cesspit, so that's going to have to be up to anyone who cares.

Looks like you have put a lot of thought into this. Best wishes. I agree people can sort through themselves a bit in games, and community can be helpful for that, but it can also be damaging. Even shouldering as much concern for the mental health of your prospective players as you're doing here (by providing things like a consent checklist and sanitizing the playing field from certain types of nastiness) is a serious burden, and I applaud your good intentions. I'm not planning to play your game but I wish you the best.

As someone who plays MUDs more, I can say that the lack-of-opportunity is a more MUSH-specific problem. If there are mechanized systems in place and everything occurs organically, then you're basically just running around playing the character you wrote all the time, and there isn't that same thirst for situations to shine. The thirst can't be avoided in a low-code environment, because you require a GM to run a scene specifically, and this is serious human labor that can't just be a backdrop to a persistent world.

@Hella

My favorite poet is my sister and I don't feel safe about posting her privately-shared poems publicly, but... my second favorite poet these days is Mary Oliver, and this is one of my favorite poems of hers.

Making the House Ready for the Lord

Dear Lord, I have swept and I have washed but
still nothing is as shining as it should be
for you. Under the sink, for example, is an
uproar of mice — it is the season of their
many children. What shall I do? And under the eaves
and through the walls the squirrels
have gnawed their ragged entrances — but it is the season
when they need shelter, so what shall I do? And
the raccoon limps into the kitchen and opens the cupboard
while the dog snores, the cat hugs the pillow;
what shall I do? Beautiful is the new snow falling
in the yard and the fox who is staring boldly
up the path, to the door. And still I believe you will
come, Lord: you will, when I speak to the fox,
the sparrow, the lost dog, the shivering sea-goose, know
that really I am speaking to you whenever I say,
as I do all morning and afternoon: Come in, Come in.

• Mary Oliver

My experience here is probably pretty different because it's not primarily in tabletops or MUSH-style games.

The favorite mystery I ever investigated in a game was when there was one PC who killed another PC and tried to hide it. In this game you were able to find tracks of people, investigate bodies and get information from different types of wounds, judge people's recent locations based off things like what they smelled like or the type of dirt on their boots, search locations for objects that had been hidden by PCs, overhear distant conversations, hide and stalk and eavesdrop, etc.

Due to all these mechanics and the fact that the original mystery was actually an organic player-provoked event, things were a bit different than I imagine they would be if a GM had to go lay out clues and drop breadcrumbs. Plus, the players didn't even necessarily need to solve the mystery. Things happen all the time that don't get investigated, and murders go unsolved, and so on.

There were times during the initial course of this story (my character was a city guard) that I imagined, as a player, that the murder-victim had actually just quit the game and not been murdered at all. The murderer was a great liar and gave no sign of lying. It was just my luck to be roleplaying a weirdo who was overly-convinced of foul play. Many times I amused myself by being absurdly dedicated to finding out the "truth"... and then, it turned out to be actually the truth, as evidence gradually came to light. Other players began to realize my character was onto something, and their characters got involved in the plot too, and it turned out to be an incredibly epic and memorable story.

@Ghost

Wow, good point. I didn't catch that angle of it. (Which, re-reading, it is ...right there and obviously stated.)

As a provocative piece of art, the episode totally makes more sense, and revulsion and discomfort is a great emotional experience given that perspective. As a coherent story it still doesn't make sense to me. But now that I've given it some more thought and been enlightened as to the context of the original writing... I can see more of how it was intended, which makes me feel far less hateful towards it, for sure.

This conversation makes me think about the Platonic perspective on art: as an imitation that distracts from truth. I remember when I learned about that, I was first in this state of cognitive denial over Plato's logic... and it was not an emotionally comfortable place to be, when I reflect on it. And then I came to accept that Plato's view did make sense, given my pre-existing belief in objective truth... but there's a nuance to it, better elaborated on by Arthur Danto, that art is a mirror that illuminates the truth about ourselves. (Roleplaying, though completely fictional, has made me learn a lot about myself and expand myself a lot, in a way that seems inarguably useful for more than just entertainment.)

So, if I look at the events depicted in the episode less as a representation of truth and more as a mirror that contains multiple clashing paradigms in an almost ironic way, it's a lot more interesting (and forgivable for its dramatic edginess).

There's a difference between calling someone a misogynist (or, I've actually seen people calling someone an abuser and stalker)... and pointing out that someone has some ingrained misogyny in their thought patterns and attitudes. It's like calling someone a racist, or pointing out that someone has some elements of racist behavior that they should watch out for. We all suffer from social maladies but hopefully we're aware of them and trying to counteract them. Someone who commits microaggressions against the Hispanic person in her office isn't a racist, but she does have some elements of racist behavior that she would be better off paying attention to. Someone who says that women shouldn't walk in dark alleys at night isn't a misogynist, but should probably pay attention to the fact that they're indulging in some really painful victim blaming. And they should probably be blockable to those victims in a safe community if they don't stop talking like that. But if the ground rules have been laid out that he needs to not engage in these discussions and he's helpful technically, that's a decision that doesn't need to be dogpiled. Especially when the admins have asked repeatedly to stop talking about it until they can sort it out themselves.

But this forum has been decried over the web (particularly reddit) for a long time as being a nesting ground for a toxic clique, with the Hog Pit as their crowning gem, and I guess people in the central friend group felt entitled to be able to do what they wanted regardless of moderating requests, and it exploded. All I can say is... wow, Ganymede really was impartial. So impartial that it seems barely human. Most people can be pressured to step off when a community acts like that, but not Ganymede. I guess from now on you all will see how much of this site was in fact held up by the clique itself, and how much of it was other people who just enjoyed the hobby. Honestly it does seem like the majority of vocal posters are gone, and most of them were mostly reasonable people except for the cliqueishness, and those who are left are still pretty shell-shocked. But if you can make a reputation as a less toxic forum, that'd be probably the only way to survive. Honestly I think you should delete the Hog Pit altogether and not even leave it as an archive, and just move out the threads that are warnings about predators.

That's my irrelevant and unasked-for take, at least.

You can argue for a game where injecting your own ego into your character is seen as a negative thing, even an immoral or pathetic thing. And from that perspective, you could say that someone getting upset when their character dies is only indicative of their ego, marking them as a lame player whose feelings you don't have to care about.

However, I think that stories thrive when people put in their egos, and truly care about the characters. And I believe that in an environment where people are injecting so much of themselves into a very social subculture, developers and game runners have a moral responsibility to build a system that is psychologically bolstering rather than destroying. The game mechanics, theme, and encouraged culture should guide players towards kindness rather than cruelty, spite, and constant suspicion of each other. A game is meant to be entertaining; it should be a fun solace -- but this has to be balanced, because otherwise it's not a game anymore, and loses any teeth that a game should have. Different people prefer their games to be differently sharp, but that doesn't change whether or not they're injecting their own ego. If someone is putting time into a game they are putting in their ego too. They're only doing it in different ways.

I've also not been playing anywhere recently, but what I find is that... I just waste my free time on other unproductive things. It's as if I have a quota of productivity and once I meet it, I do not any longer have the energy to be productive. Being relatively introverted, I consider social engagements to be "productive" time spent, too. So I'm going to waste my downtime one way or another. It's not like watching a show is any nobler than playing a game. I'd even say MU* is more productive because at least you're being creative.

The worst thing is Tik Tok. I can lose like... an entire hour without even noticing it went by, and have gained no education nor expressed any creativity.

Because it's summertime though I've been spending a lot more time outdoors and while this may not be strictly "productive", at least it's good for mental and physical health. And I have some projects I'm working on outside that are productive in a sense, so that's nice to think about.