Posts made by hobos

@Misadventure

I feel the same way about it, and that is an awesome generator! Thanks for sharing it.

Here's the last character I played on a MUD.

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.

When it comes to stories, I feel unhappy with the idea, in general, if players refuse consequences to their characters' actions by saying "I don't consent to this". But there are a lot of exceptions, and death is one of them.

I don't think it's bad, at all, for someone to express that they're not ready to end their character's story. I don't think character stories should be ended willy-nilly. If characters die all the time for small reasons, you'll get a lot of bitterness, paralysis, and darkness-induced apathy in the playerbase. The lives of characters will no longer feel valuable. So, it is beneficial for death to be something meaningful and consent-based.

If someone is stretching the boundaries of believability, however, then it becomes a burden on both their story and everyone else's story. Also, the thrill of death lurking around the corner can be exciting, and it can make the survival of a very dangerous situation seem like a far more impactful and momentous occasion.

So, for me, my perfect game would have a nice balance that prioritized the story of the characters. Coming back from the edge of death should involve consequences like handicaps or long-term recovery, and also have costs in terms of things like expensive supplies. It might require the cooperation and efforts of other characters, leading to interesting story developments. And there should always be a chance, however small, and based on administrative decisions rather than a mechanized system -- that your character could die, whether you consent to it or not.

For 1989 it was edgy, but for today, that kind of perspective feels super overdone. I was actually born in 1989 so maybe it's difficult for me to appreciate what was legitimately edgy back then.

Also yeah, I don't appreciate how free people can be with the 'edgelord' label. But it does actually apply in some cases. (Maybe not this one, I admit, but without all the context and history, it could definitely come off that way to an uneducated observer such as myself).

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).

@Ghost

Yeah, I can see its value as like... a provocative themed piece of art, more than a story that makes realistic sense to me. I guess you can't really cover the nuance of impulse control within a made-for TV episode that is showing rather than sanctimoniously telling.

I just don't like the implied connections between truth and lack of impulse control, and that's what revolts me about this episode -- which, if I look at it as a provocative themed piece of art, its purpose would be to inspire this kind of conversation.

In my mind, impulse control is derived from truth, and the question 'what is it you truly want?' .... rather than human beings acting like slaves to basic instincts.

I thought it suffered from darkness-induced audience apathy to such an extent that it was ludicrous. It came off like a 15-year-old goth's fanfiction about reality. I didn't think it was dark; I thought it was laughable. I just can't believe human beings are so dishonest and brutal at their core, even if I'm asked to suspend my paradigm for only as long as a bottle episode of an overdramatic mythology-slanted show. It was like being asked an existential question by a wannabe philosopher whose knowledge of existentialism consists solely of meme quotes on sad tumblr. I guess it's edgy to think people are terrible monsters saved only by ultimately-dishonest aspirations? But I just thought it was cheap.

Here's my ugly truth about this post... that episode annoyed me to the extent that I jumped at this chance to rip it apart as hard as I could. Why? .... because to me, truth is what connects us. A real human connection, where you confide your truth to someone, is something beautiful and bonding, even if the truth shared is not a beautiful one. And I hated the implication that dreams are lies we tell ourselves.

@Ghost

While online communities are like... the new social existence of many modern human beings, and societies and subsocieties matter hugely to the human psyche, I still wouldn't go as far as comparing 'a bunch of people made me feel bad online' to being held at knifepoint in real life.

I don't think the analogy fits, to be honest. The type of abuse they are trying to defend against is not the same as the type of abuse they are propagating. "Someone stalked me IRL" is not the same as "someone hurt my feelings on an internet forum", you know?

Also, if they generally keep the tribal behavior in their own community and don't go out attacking others, it's not as if they're breaking into their neighbor's home to hold their neighbor at knifepoint. It's more like there's a big sign on their own home warning: "You could be held at knifepoint if you step in here!".

The Hog Pit used to function as that sign on MSB, which is why a lot of calmer sorts of people keep (kept?) away.

I'm okay with accepting that people made fun of me on an internet forum (that I entered despite the big sign) because they are traumatized and deep down worried about being stalked in real life, and they're just strafing at any unknown possible-stalker figure. I actually feel sort of kindly towards them when I think about it that way.

Personally, I wouldn't operate that way myself, because again, I don't believe it is effective. But that is beside the point anyway. And I am thinking about efficacy from a position with very little trauma compared to many people, so it is natural that I would be thinking more logically and less emotionally -- and there is no proven science about this anyway, so it's possible I am not even correct.

Whether administrative action was 100% wrong or not, there are definitely things that could have been handled better and it may be valuable to speculate on those things in order to try to do better if there ever is a next time.

That was partially already done with the reversal of some of the bans. And I don't think anyone who is desirous of someone else adhering to their opinion will ever be happy unless the other person entirely capitulates to their opinion (and even then, probably not). So this isn't about making anyone else happy, but about general self-improvement.

I'll go first. I'm not anyone in charge but I still feel that I made some mistakes to admit here. I should not have gone over to the other forum and tried to talk to them there. Naturally they were smarting from a wound, and I am not a reassuring friend, and I didn't help anything at all. It was not the time to question their approaches or encourage any sort of social change. That was just like rubbing salt into a wound. Further, I shouldn't have taken their reaction personally and used it as an example of the type of behavior that I don't like seeing on community forums. Obviously they have no problem with behaving that way and this is just a cultural clash. What I should have done is recognize earlier that there is a reason human beings behave in tribal ways, and I should have acknowledged that it was about people feeling safe sooner rather than later. I'm embarrassed by how long it took me to get to that conclusion.

Cliquery may not be how I'd prefer a community forum to act, but it is a perfectly legitimate way to act given the political atmosphere of current times. I personally don't think it is wholly effective in terms of actually guaranteeing safety. I think it just encourages actual real predators (like Cullen) to come back incognito over and over with new attempts at conquering the fakery that is required to blend in. But what can you do? We all try to get along in life as best as we can, and it's okay to have different perspectives, and like Derp says... this split is probably a good thing, after all. And if people -feel- safe, that's really enough. Life's already too hard.

To those who have been upset in the past due to being unfairly character-assassinated, is it possible to realize you are just collateral damage to a society struggling to keep itself safe? The personal attacks are difficult to stop taking personally, I know. But realization where it comes from and why might be a good step towards healing -- on an individual level, at least, if not a community one.

@ZombieGenesis Yeah, it is a spectrum with a lot of overlap, probably. The intersection of gaming and creative writing is honestly so magical. I haven't found anything else like it in my life. Definitely people seem to prefer different spots on the spectrum, though. My best friend in the hobby prefers a spot more towards the imaginative storytelling side, and I am constantly in awe of their storytelling capabilities, and often feel pretty silly in comparison. At least our playstyles are similar enough to get along and play with each other happily.

These are things that make the difference between whether something is a game or solely a writing experience, if I understand what you're discussing... and you will probably find a very wide range of preferences depending on different players.

I think you have navigators and you have storytellers. Sometimes the code tells the story by mechanical chance, as is the case in a lot of MUDs, and sometimes a GM tells the story, and you also have players who are adept at making things up and storytelling for themselves in a sense. I've always felt the most comfortable being a navigator. If my character is walking along a place where they might get pickpocketed, but there is no code that brings over a thief NPC, I will have a hard time just making up a pickpocketing event -- whereas some more storyteller-type players will think "wow, my character could be robbed here, I will imagine that this happens and change my description to have a black eye and go complain to someone that I lost all my pocket change!"

If you have mechanized events happening in the game regarding pickpockets and the storyteller does that, then you will have other players potentially questioning the legitimacy of this supposed robbery. So, players who are very comfortable as storytellers will likely feel that a game with mechanized events could be stepping on their storytelling toes. However, players like me would like the guidance of mechanized events. It feels like more to do, more to work with, more of a game, and more legitimacy in reacting organically as a character rather than writing a novel on my own.

It's all about preference and type of game...

@Ghost

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

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.

@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.

@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

@warma-sheen said in Wish Fulfillment RP:

@arkandel said in Wish Fulfillment RP:

The issue comes when it's not about playing something better than we are, but playing something better than others are. That's when shit starts to hit the fan, since you now have multiple people all wanting to be the best - the most powerful, coolest, sexiest.

Well that depends on what you want out of MU*ing. The real issue here is if people aren't mature enough to handle wanting something and failing to achieve it or if they ruin someone else's experience in order to achieve it.

At the end of the day it comes back to what we're doing here, a topic that isn't well defined. Is it cooperative storytelling? Is it collective writing? Or are we playing a game: the G of RPG? Games have winners and losers. Most games have more losers than winners. The ideal (in my opinion) is to be a good winner as well as a good loser. Its one of those character traits that seems to be easily overlooked and undervalued as we increasingly see win-at-all-costs and burn-it-all-down-if-we-lose popular models displayed in the world around us.

There's nothing at all wrong with the idea of wish fulfillment itself. Its your own little dose of happiness and pleasure with unlimited refills and no prescription necessary! And most MU*s allows you an opportunity to create that for yourselves. Very few games police private scenes between you and another player. Most let you tell the stories your want amongst yourselves (with varying degrees of limits). That's not good enough for some people though.

The problem with wish fulfillment on a MU* is that many people want everyone else to accept their wish as reality. It isn't enough for someone to live out a fantasy. They can do that on their own writing whatever they want without limits. They don't want that. What does it for them is that other people accept their reality and acknowledge it, willingly or otherwise. So they come to a MU* where people gather. Its a power and control issue, forcing your will onto others. And that's a people problem. So not just players. But staff.

That's where things take a hard turn into problems, especially when people start using unfair advantages, which doesn't just include classic cheating, but also more subtle maneuvers like gaslighting and emotional manipulation, to impose their wishes on other people because their wish can't be fulfilled if someone else doesn't accept it fully.

If people kept their wish fulfillment to themselves, things would be fine. But when problems arise, its usually that someone has extended their wish fulfillment out to someone else trying to force acceptance.

Thought this was really insightful. I definitely notice people reacting with OOC unhappiness rather than IC play sometimes when their concept is challenged by another's IC play. I do find it a problem but it's also human nature and seems to happen whether or not wish fulfillment is involved. Here's an example: a player is trying to roleplay a benevolent mafia boss named Ruff Dooley.

This player, if asked about his character, might say something like, "Dooley can be tough, but it comes from a place of love. He deeply cares about his neighborhood and takes care of it, and the people there know that, and honestly respect him. He rules with love, not fear."

And another player ends up rolling in a character that saw her parents murdered by mafia henchmen. She displays fear and resentment towards Dooley...

Now Dooley's player is upset. And it doesn't matter whether he has wish fulfillment towards being a benevolent mafia boss.

I think this is a normal human thing. When I was in my late teens, I noticed it in myself, and thought I was being immature... So I taught myself to revel in misunderstandings of my character and roleplay through those as happy narrative conflicts, and take them as proof that I was playing a layered and multifaceted character. But then when I got a lot older and came back to these games, I realized that veterans of this hobby show the same sorts of OOC peevishness when their concept is challenged through IC events.

And it probably just gets way more personal when wish fulfillment fantasies are involved, because in those cases, people are more liable to insert more of themselves into a roleplay character and take everything more personally in general.

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.

Interesting and realistic story has always been enough incentive for me to fail, but I wouldn't want to fail at something that I have designed my character to be really good at, especially if there wasn't much opportunity to do that thing. I like to fail about things that I have designed my character to be bad at, because then there is the story of getting better at that thing or learning to cope with the deficiency, or other realistic outcomes like total failure regarding that thing.

"Wanting to shine" in this case is just... wanting to play the character you wrote.

Thinking about this, maybe... when it comes to running stories for people, it's important to consider both the strengths and weaknesses of their characters. Times to win are fun, but so are times to realistically fail. Maybe one character has a terrible trauma in their past when it comes to mushrooms, but they're also a rifle expert. They're blasting zombie heads like crazy until the Mutated Mushroom Lord emerges from the abandoned gas station, and then they get the chance to freeze up and fail. In this situation, failing is just as much "shining" as winning, because the player is getting to play the Traumatized Rifle Expert that they initially intended to write.

Maybe part of the problem is just people who are intentionally writing Mary Sues without any realistic weaknesses to balance their strengths. You could force a solution for that by a mechanized system that doesn't let you pick some skills if you've picked others, but I think it's more of a cultural problem. We all need to be better at warmly accepting the failure of a character as part of a story, and not something to resent the player about. That doesn't mean that there can't be consequences involved in-game... if a character screws up badly, they're going to have to suffer the results of that, and all of this is part of the story and a suitable ending or possible redemption arc. But there shouldn't be any OOC stigma towards the players of failures -- the story should be respected and appreciated as a realistic story.

@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.