Best posts made by L. B. Heuschkel

@Auspice Ares rocks, and this is indeed one of the reasons why. I recall editing pages of pages of prompts and game code out of logs by hand and yes, I'll cede that that might be one reason to only bother with the important bits.

One might argue that what you did was give yourself a master class in literary editing.

@Killer-Klown There's a term for this, I just can't remember what it is. It's pretty common -- we adapt the speed and style to match that of the person we're playing with. I know I certainly do it -- when I am with one person we swap 500 word poses and take longer writing them, while with another, it's rapid-fire shortposes, bam bam bam. Either works, as long as everyone's on the same page.

I tend to find that the kind of background stuff that ever gets made relevant IC is that which requires others to respond to your actions.

Stating that you're a career criminal doesn't interest anyone unless you've got a price on your head -- literally tattooed on your forehead so they can claim with confidence that yes, their character has actually heard about it before you told them.

Getting caught doing something criminal, on the other hand, forces them to react. Open a scene with being somewhere you shouldn't, possess something you shouldn't have, ask questions about people you shouldn't -- as you say, filling in the actual details when they come up IC.

It's probably one of the more common discrepancies -- what people write on their background contra what they actually bring into the game.

@Kestrel said in Gap between RP fantasy and RP reality:

I don't think we play on the same games, but I would 100% want to meet this character. And then find some way to blackmail him for all the information he's gathered, because this seems like the perfect character to have some kind of mindfuckery with.

I am only on Ankh-Morpork MUSH, indeed; I only really have headspace for one fictional universe besides the two of my own that I write in. But if you ever for some reason decide you're bored enough to visit, come do your worst. Getting blackmailed to kingdom come sounds like a nice twist to the balance -- I'm usually the one with the delusions of Moriartyness, and getting taken down a peg can be just as fun roleplaying as having a scheme unfold prettily.

@Kestrel Better to burn out than to fade away!

#oldmoviequotesftw

@Arkandel Part of the solution to the problem of lacking or lazy official storytellers is to tell the story yourself, too. I am currently running a major plotline based off my character's background for five people. I didn't consult with the game admins first because nothing in it will change the official game lore or world -- only the characters who are in it.

I mean, as long as you play by the setting's internal rules, there's no reason to sit and wait for someone to give action to you. Dole it out yourself instead.

@Kestrel One point on Lovecraft and other long dead writers: They're dead. With a living author -- like Rowlings -- you can ask yourself, do I want to give money to this asshole? With an author who's long dead, though, the point is moot. The only person who suffers from 'canceling' them is, well, anyone with an interest.

As a hobby historian I'm very wary of attempts to clean up history. Kipling wrote beautiful India stories -- doesn't change the fact he was an imperialistic git. Lovecraft was a horrible racist but his universe is still fascinating. The writings of long dead writers tell two stories -- that which they intended to tell, and on the meta level, the story of the writer and the ethics of the period they lived in.

For modern writers it's a little different. I'm inclined to say that Rowlings being a horrible person doesn't make her books horrible (though I'll admit they never appealed to me much, but they didn't before she was outed either). It's okay to love them. The question to ask oneself is whether one wants to financially support this person -- and for some the answer will be, yes, because I love the books more than I care about the author's views. I'm inclined to say that either take is alright because where one draws the line is always a very personal thing, and mob mentality rarely leads to good places. Personally I'd never buy a thing she wrote, but I'm not going to condemn others for doing so.

@Kestrel said in Well, this sums up why I RP:

As for Lovecraft, I think evidence of his abominable racism and xenophobia isn't just present in his works; it's the entire foundation his works were built on. I don't avoid his works because I'm making it a conscious point to boycott them; I avoid them because they disgust me. I'm just not interested in reading the sad, pathetic ravings of a depraved and lonely lunatic writing about how scary foreigners are through the thinly veiled metaphor of incomprehensible alien creatures replacing and overtaking humanity or whatever.

And that's another kettle of fish right there, indeed. Just because something is considered a 'classic' doesn't mean you have to enjoy it. I find Lovecraft profoundly boring; he doesn't speak to me at all. Many so-called greats of the past don't. And that's fine.

On a note to fiction and Lovecraft in general: The first science fiction novels, in any recognisable meanings of the term, hail all the way back to the 1600s, Ludvig Holberg's hollow world story among them. We may credit Lovecraft, perhaps, for helping -- along with many others -- to introduce speculative fiction to the mainstream.

@Darren The experience you describe is pretty much mine as well. Got into the hobby in the 90s, watched the MMOs kill half the playerbase and MySpace and later on, other social media, kill the other half. Tried MMOs for some years, ended up quitting those horrified with the outrage culture and the alt-right recruiters.

Ended up dragged back in this autumn and have found a small community that's talkative, enjoys RP, and has a laid back chat culture. It's like coming home. If you're bored sometime, feel very free to visit and see if we're the kind of chatty community you're aching for.

@Darren Nope. I put up a profile pic because most places require it, but I've often preferred to sketch it myself, and I'd much rather be allowed to use words. When I have had to use somebody's actor photo from the web I've usually done some heavy photoshopping to get it closer to what's going on in my mind's theatre -- in part because if you toss up a photo of Chris Hemworth then people are going to associate that character with Thor no matter how you actually play it.

Two games on the same theme are not competition. They are two variations on the same theme. The admins will be different, the implementation will be different, the playerbase will be different. Claiming that they are in competition is, to me, similar to claiming that only one person is allowed to write fan fiction for each franchise.

@Kestrel Can verify he pulled a similar stunt when banned elsewhere, trying to garner sympathy in Discord groups.

@JinShei said in A bit of trouble on Firefly:

From my recollection, he was reasonable with @L-B-Heuschkel who had logged in with a male name, and focused entirely on me, with a female name...

Correct. From what I have seen, bumping into him now three times (I don't think he made the connection from Discworld to my Gray Harbor char), he's exceedingly and unfailingly polite to men. And rather not so to women. This is definitely a misogyny thing.

@SinCerely I love that I recognise your icon at first glance. I mean, not that I'd admit to it.

@Xetetic I'm sorry to hear that you've had such a miserable experience. Can't say I blame you for wanting to do something else for a while. Some games are exceedingly difficult to get into and some feel like an old boys' club where new people simply aren't welcome.

Here's to hoping you feel up to returning to the hobby and find one of those more welcoming games when you do.

@Groth said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:

@L-B-Heuschkel said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:

There's a writing exercise I recommend if you're in doubt (like many others here, I am a writer). Write your story with every character as a white male (or whatever your default is). Then roll dice for gender, ethnicity and sexuality. If doing so fundamentally changed your story, then you're not writing people but tropes. Obviously works best in a setting with at least some equity.

I think there's a worthwhile caveat here that there's a lot of story-lines where the gender and ethnicity of the characters are crucial to the plot. Take Game of Thrones for instance, if you switched the genders of Cersei Lannister and Robert Baratheon then their children couldn't be Jaime's kids anymore and that entire story is gone.

No writing exercise covers all scenarios. This one wouldn't work very well on any quasi-medieval footing anyhow, seeing as that the gender roles in GoT are already highly skewered, and swapping it all up would break the story. The race aspect might still apply though -- is there any reason the Baratheons could not be black?

@Warma-Sheen said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:

I wish more people who did not want to read up about who they are playing did not make characters.

I don't disagree with you. Some reading is certainly to be expected, and reasonably demanded. But I do feel this need to point out that some is not fifty pages. I am not the only person out there with mild brain damage, finding it difficult to retain large infodumps with little context.

@Auspice said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:

They didn't steal women. Women just liked a man who knew how to bathe.

I mean, wouldn't you?

@Tinuviel Except for the Norwegian and Icelandic boys, of course. XD

Anyhow, point here being, Norse pirates were not rastafaris. Nor were they Nazis. Cultural ignorance can be painful to watch, read books.

@surreality said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:

There was a point in time -- not terribly long ago in the historical sense -- when Spanish, Irish, Italians, Greeks, and some others 'weren't white enough'. You'd see despicable stereotypes about these groups spread around widely. You see relics of it today: 'Irish are all violent drunks', 'Italians are all greasy mobbed-up womanizers', etc. despite these people now being ushered under the 'white' umbrella in the US.

This is definitely still a thing in Northern Europe. It doesn't get lobbed under 'racism' since we tend to look at Southern Europeans as white -- but it's certainly a cultural bigotry that still exists. It also inarguably gets stronger the more semitic looking (using the term there for the Mediterranean ethnotype -- Arab, North African, Palestinian, etc). The paler and lighter, the less blatant the stereotyping.