Today I learned that cancer screening is mandatory in my country when you turn 50, but if you can't walk without mobility aids you can't access the location they're made in. But they're fixing it in a couple of years so, like, deal.
I'm very, very tired of even the most basic of things not being disability accessible.
@Derp There will always be a segment of players who just don't think the restrictions of the theme applies to them. Cue catgirls in Victorian settings -- or just plain indifferent to the theme because they're there to find TS partners.
What you can control is indeed, as you say, what the game recognises as canon. What the helpfiles say. What gets added to the game wiki, and so on.
I am always inclined to be lax on players, and I am likely far more friendly than I should be -- which is ironic, given that I have on occasion been terribly frustrated with games that didn't bother to address strong theme deviations.
@hedgehog Southern Jutland. They are building new hospital facilities for all of this, I was told. So I can just wait a couple of years or something. Bright smile from nurse.
I have no reason to suspect that I have breast cancer. The screening is mandatory in the fashion that my own GP is expected to make me bloody well take it, however, and there'll be no end of nagging if I don't. So now it's on me to get an appointment at a hospital in another region, and arrange transportation.
I am fortunate enough to have a partner who drives and works shifts so that driving in the work day is actually possible at intervals. Many disabled people aren't.
Taxi pool transportation can be booked -- but with the caveat that they pick you up with in a two hour timeframe of the booking time. Meaning that this can be a full day expedition with two times two hours' curbside wait. I am lucky -- I have a partner with a car. Again, many disabled people don't. Last week it was freezing -15C. That'd be great for an elderly, disabled person to sit curbside for four hours in, I figure.
I am red hot furious about the complete lack of concern for this.
@faraday said in Privacy in gaming:
If they don't complain, then they're not entitled to a status update about the complaint, IMHO.
Mind reading class for admins now commencing.
@arkandel said in Health and Wealth and GrownUp Stuff:
More time to play mobile games on the porcelain throne!
<<
I've gotten pretty good at Gardenscapes.
@Ganymede said in Privacy in gaming:
For that reason, I don't mind staff playing PCs or otherwise lingering around on channels.
I'm a newcomer to MUSHing and Ares (though not to online gaming or MUs in general) and I have to ask: Is this not normally the case? Nothing would cause me to burn out faster as a staffer than knowing I was helping make an awesome game -- but I'm not allowed to play in it.
Obvious disclaimers that staff shouldn't have advantages for their characters, that staff should stay low key during official plots, etc.
@faraday said in Web portals and scenes and grids oh my!:
I've sat on public rooms on Penn games too and had the same experience. This isn't an Ares thing.
I have had someone walk in on me on grid, on a Penn game. It's just that every time it was the same one person. So there's one person (hi @Caggles) who actually does this. 
No, it's not an Ares thing, it's a game culture thing.
@Ganymede Staff should limit their characters so that they avoid running the risk of appearing like the game is all about them. If you want to be a lead character, don't apply for staff. But conversely, there's lots of fun to be had in being on the sidelines of plots, throwing in red herrings, mucking things up, and just generally being part of the world. I'd gladly give up being a lead character, but not the rest.
Of course, I'm no longer staff anywhere, so now I get the best of all the worlds.
@faraday Agreed. There are no doubt games that could do with a community effort to make things less closed-off and private. I think I mentioned above, I have quit games that had this problem -- that you just can't get into stuff, synchronous or asynchronous, because you're not part of the old boys' club. But that is indeed not a codebase issue.
@JinShei Yes. My point is, Downey acts as an NPC. Go minigolfing, drinking, sexing, whatever, just for the fun and RP pleasure of it, and he's crossed way out of that territory.
Someone wrote, about 50 pages previous, that you need to decide whether you're wearing your GM cap or your player cap. That's a good way of putting it. Crossing that line is a good way to get me to run away screaming, at least, because an admin who doesn't recognise that boundary probably fails at other boundaries too.
@Lotherio You're entitled 110% to your preference where your own scenes are concerned.
Age old scenes that seem to move glacially sometimes have another explanation, though. The group of players I spend most time with -- and myself for that matter -- are people who suffer disabling chronic illnesses. Playing at a pace of a pose per day, and sometimes less, is the only way some of these people can play.
Which still does not rule out that a lot of games could benefit from some kind of awareness that having things going on for new and unattached people to join is a good thing, and an effort should be made to cater to all play styles.
@Arkandel said in Difference between an NPC and a Staff PC?:
I like running PrPs without the label
I've always had a habit of, well, starting stuff. Personal stories, bouncing off my own characters or those around me. I am fonder of those than of big, organised plots because the latter often end up a competition to get seen and noticed, one in which particularly the quieter players end up trounced.
The good thing is, you do indeed not need a staff bit to do so, and I've never let my lack of one stop me. Nor have I any intention of asking for one again anywhere, because I really, really don't miss staff politics.
@silverfox No, it doesn't. You need to announce it yourself on the RP channel or similar.
What I usually do is make sure there are two people in an open scene, then announce it. People sometimes hesitate to come in if there's only one person -- whether it's not knowing this person and thinking maybe there's a reason they're alone, or that they're work slow and don't have space for a scene where they are the other person's only focus.
Get two guys talking, though, and four others will be there in ten minutes (provided four guys exist on grid at the time, disclaimer, European timezone stupid, etc).
@Thenomain Interesting take. I don't mean that ironically -- I am fascinated by how differently we view the chargen process. To me, chargen is a writing excercise. An exciting one. I get to think my character through and define him or her, write down all the little quirks and hints... And people use them. All the time. Sometimes to a point where I have to go, dude or dudette, just because it says I'm from Thrillsville doesn't mean I have the zip code tattood on my forehead, at least ASK.
@Misadventure To me, seeding ideas is a combination of dropping hints and suggestions of things that may happen down the line; introducing an NPC who will be a big deal later, or dropping information that seems not so relevant now, until suddenly next week, someone goes OH WAIT.
It can also be bringing up new angles or different points of view to the existing -- inspiring players to grab a ball and run with it. I think the best example I've seen was a closing scene in a storyline I did in which the villain NPC was defeated. A supernatural creature, it was then brought back by another player and adopted as a guardian spirit by them -- which leads to all kinds of new shenanigans.
To me, a lot of this has to do with letting go of the reins. You throw balls up in the air; some of them get caught. Players think outside of the box, do things you had not expected -- you grab those balls and run with them. Stories never turn out the way I expect and that is part of what keeps me entertained. Nothing like planning a big epic fight, only to have the gang shame a sixteen tons dragon into slinking off like an embarrassed puppy.
On the official metaplot/staff-run things: I tend to run pretty parallel because that way, I can do what I want to do without needing to coordinate closely (this is a big deal for me since I'm in European time and having to wait to talk to someone in PST will literally slow everything to a halt for 24 hours or more).
I also enjoy doing what I call ambience events -- we had a major storm of the century plot on Gray Harbor recently, and during that, I ran stuff in a hurricane shelter. So, related to the official story, but not so closely tied in that I lock anyone in anything.
@HelloProject said in The ethics of IC romance, TS, etc:
These were the AOL days. I still know her and am not allowed to ever bring it up to her lol.
At least she's acknowledging that she was a prat and some things better stay buried?
I found out later that the same player went on to have a relationship IC with another player and when that ended, shamed him as a pedophile. Then again, she also claimed to be terminally ill and that her boyfriend in real life broke into hospital to beat her up twice, and that she regularly missed school because of near-death experiences. There's a certain breed of teenager on the internet you just need to stay the hell away from.
@Misadventure I need to not feel that anything I do may result in angry forum posts or retcons or otherwise having staff telling me I am not doing things the way they want. If this is the case, I very quickly stop doing things at all, because I'm not on a game to cause trouble. I will read the framework put to me before I do things, obviously -- but I have, once, been on a game where the message was 'go do all the things', and then every single time someone did, there were 'please don't do those things' from admin staff. That wilts an urge to be proactive fast.
Apart from that, not really. Well, again, an interested audience, but staff doesn't provide those.
@Alamias I've played characters many times who were absolutely IC creeps. Lewd, borderline abusive, sleazeballs, you name it. I've never had anyone tell me to back off or that I made them uncomfortable. I have been paged 'not interested, sorry' a few times which I have obviously accepted. Once, 'I'd like you to back off a bit now' which I obviously also accepted, and followed up with an OOC apology and clarification that this was indeed IC, and they were very welcome to kick my character's arse six ways into sundays because yes, he was definitely deserving of it. Ended up playing with that person regularly, on a note, and getting said character's arse kicked a lot.
The kicker there seems to be, at least to me, whether the line in the sand between IC and OOC is crystal clear. A bit of self irony in the poses, a narrative style that makes it evident that you, the player, are aware that you, the character, is out of line, will really go far to make others not question what the hell they're dealing with.
@SparklesTheClown In my experience, coming from 25 years of MUDs to MUSHes just last year, the main difference is experience grinding and number chasing. The instant you reward people for essentially solving puzzles, killing mobiles and running around on the grid using their skills -- a lot of those people are going to base their RP on who has the highest combat skill, and think about nothing else. Which means, effectively, you have a number chasing game, not a roleplaying game.
I'm going to quickly point a spotlight at something else that ruins a scene for me, whether as GM or player -- that guy who takes 40 minutes to pose that he basically does nothing. Or says 'skip me' after those 40 minutes.
That guy needs to go.