Best posts made by mietze

I am pretty sure that they'd get a few takers even if they opened up "no magic apps" to new people. But yeah, I understand that maybe it's not the pcs they want kept down, but players. Personally disappointing for me, but infinitely better to have a staff that makes decisions like this for their own sanity. THough if the reasoning is that non-magic-users are not important or don't rate much (hence no drag on GMing) then I'm kinda glad I didn't rush to app! Since that's what I personally would have created!

I don't doubt your motivations, Kestrel, and I bet you are a really fun antagonist to play with. What I would caution though--and maybe it's just that you've not yet run into it yet but you likely will--is that absolutely antagonist pcs can very much be the flip side of the "pretty princesses" on the selfishness coin, and often accuse those who don't appreciate the ooc domination as well as "not being able to handle their PC being perfect in my pc's eyes." Or people that start avoiding them and the constant center of attention need as "well they just don't like anything that's not hearts and unicorns play."

Its just something to keep in mind if you start to get a lot of feedback from /varied sources/ (that's important!) that it may be overly dominating things. And if someone expresses some dissatisfaction with that type of play in general to maybe keep that in mind (they are getting too much of that particular kind of play every time they enter a scene) as something that most people get irritated at no matter what it is, and not and indication that they don't like that kind of play at /all/ or can't handle it.

It sounds like you're doing the good things like bothering to check (either overtly or not) if your partners are enjoying themselves. It's the people that do not that make folks leery. Or when someone cannot express that they're finding constant unprovoked antagonism tiresome/stressful/unfun and they're told that it must be just because they don't like anything that doesn't make them perfect. That's not true for a lot of people (I know it is for some!); sometimes they mean what they say--that they're just not finding constant personal antagonism that fun when it totally dominates everything they try to participate in and is directed at them.

OMG I get to do RL roleplaying today! Just got done with my moulage for a mass casualty at city hall drill for some local CERT and EMS teams. I get to be someone combative and disoriented with a head injury who will wander around and fall a lot until restrained. My fake blood is oozy and minty fresh (and edible). Havent done this since high school when I was a volunteer for law enforcement and ems training!!

@Auspice I once deeply offended someone by laughing when they posed penetrating someone's cervix. He named like 4 other pcs who said they loved it when a man did that. Oooookay, mister matchstick diameter cock!

Also dont go meet someone your first day on grid at the family mansion room that has a hot tub in it.

@Kestrel
tl;dr: Everyone needs to learn to just be more accepting and find their niche because no style is better than the other, it's all just preferences. Live and let live.

I think you may be a little heavy on the 'dr' side of what's been said. One of the biggest problems is that people (especially antagonist PCs, and I have been guilty of this myself at times) want to push people into boxes of 'all or nothing'. IF you don't enjoy my antagonist play at the moment, it must be because you are just one of those warm and fuzzy pretty princess TSers. Warning labels are great, but most good people are not going to want to bar anyone from play; what are they supposed to do when you join in? Tell you to get lost? Get run out of the scene themselves?

Or is it okay, maybe, to ask EVERYBODY (antagonist or not) to mind their OOC manners, to not scene dominate all the time (sometimes it's helpful to go and read logs if it's a heavily logged site). Maybe it's okay to not assume that if someone ducks out or needs to take a break from someone attacking them ICly, it may be NOT because they're a pussy who only wants to go on pony rides but because they've had someone doing that in every scene they've been in and it's stressing them out and not allowing them to actually develop their PC as much or primarily only be in defensive RP. (Which is awesome, but not if that is ALL they get to do). Just like it is okay to NOT assume that people whose PCs are snarly and snappish and mean or whatever hate your play or even your PC. That deciding to white knight someone's ass and ostracize a "mean" PC OOC/IC crossover is a pretty shitty thing to do that's deep sixing a lot of awesome RP for everyone. Or that winning/losing one time doesn't mean that's all that you're good for.

It is possible to be a difficult, hard to handle, antagonist PC /without/ needing to piss all over everyone OOCly and make every scene you're ever in no matter what it is constantly revolve around you. (For that matter, it is possible to do that as a purposeful "white knight" done well PC also, you don't need to curbstomb everyone and turn it into mememememe there either). It is not cool to assume that IC antagonists are horrible people who are only there to troll people/shit all over everyone. It's also not cool to stick one's nose in the air and say that if anyone gets stressed out/doesn't want to have antagonistic play all the time, it's because they're just a perfect princess who wants everyone to love them. While there are people who fit either extreme to a tee (unfortunately) the vast majority of people do not.

Warning labels, thematic descriptions, whatever, it has nothing to do with being an OOC jackass. You can have a very antagonistic theme with players who are not jackasses. And a 'cooperative' theme dominated by jackass players. I've seen warning labels self-applied to players who were major hosebeasts using it as a excuse to be absolutely horrible and people who were very concerned with having /and providing/ fun to other players and respectful of limits (as in, I will not think you're a pussy if you choose to limit your time with me as a result, I understand my PC isn't everyone's cup of tea, not I will change my PC to suit you.). It's really the behavior, not the warnings, that makes or breaks it. And sometimes people get a little too lazy with self-awareness. It's easy to do. I will bet you that anyone who has been a MU*er for long has created problems for themselves a time or two with self-unawareness, or they're lying.

LARP and 90s Cons (and to some degree 80s and 90s game store crowds) were the worst for me, as far as dealing with gross people.

And as much as sometimes there's a desire to explain that behavior away as just "socially awkward"...no.

I did meet a ton of socially awkward men at these things. All the time (maybe I got lucky but most of the women I personally met were awesome). The vast majority of even socially awkward men do NOT want to put their hands on your genitals and breasts without asking. They actually do not make comments about how they hope you'll fall asleep so they can rape you (or make comments about how they'd like to do that to another woman in the room as if including you in the joke). The vast majority of men who are socially awkward may not be able to look you in the eyes but they're also not staring at your boobs or your crotch instead. That isn't a "socially awkward" thing. And in my experience the WORST people in those groups to do that shit were never the shy, limited contact with the outside world, uber nerd on the spectrum people. They were almost exclusively the people who were capable of manipulation and other very socially savvy things who had some degree of authority at the event/in the community, and the social capital to do it with impunity. I'm really glad that while things aren't perfect, more and more people regardless of gender don't tolerate or excuse away that shit.

Though the absolute WORST place for creeper behavior I ever experienced as a teen was Civil Air Patrol state gatherings and Jr ROTC. Up to and including one of the sponsors (a 40 something active duty officer, I was 17) who leaned over in an elevator and whispered in my ear "I love that dress, you're a knockout, if I thought I could get away with it, I'd attack you right now." I was attending the military ball with his son (who was 1000 percent NOT like that at all). I think it's probably a lot different now I hope. It was the era of when those things were not considered big deals after all.

There's different kinds of tensions too. I don't like usual like telenovela levels of personal conflict, though I know people that love it and that is great. One of the things I love about fantasy-type hierarchical games with political marriages is the (at least in theory) opportunity for cultural clashes, being thrown sink or swim into upholding a contract between two families that's much larger than either one's desires. Ect. I do not think that particular flavor though is one that many players really enjoy, which is fine--there are some folks out there that I've been grateful to find now and then. And there are always valid concerns with "no love in the present or expected" IC relationships, because there can be a lot of complications with them if other people are involved, and misunderstand the IC or OOC dynamic. Or if someone enters that with the expectation that things will move along to true love quickly (or ever in the scope of the game) and just figures that will happen on their timetable despite the other player warning that may not be feasible.

Same thing with family stuff, really. I love family play/tension--but I understand why that may not be great if someone really wants a safe home base. And sometimes depending on the PC I might prefer that too.

It's a complicated thing, and I really admire people who have been successful with working through that 100 percent organically with no discussion.

Other MUSH players and staffers are never your therapists, and using them as such is wrong. Mushing can be therapeutic, I know it has been both that and cathartic for me personally at times, but putting that on others that you don't even know is revolting to me. If you cannot handle setbacks or disappointments on a game you play, then you ought not be on it. Whether it's simply you hate the staff or you're just more sensitive than usual. It's never an excuse to say that the only acceptable staffing model or decision is the one that's yours and how dare anyone run anything contrary to it.

You don't like it? Don't play. You are unable to function in life because of something that happened on a game you're playing? You have no business being on it. It's bad for you and you have no business guilt tripping people for upsetting you to the point of illness. If you find yourself running into problems all over the place, maybe for the health of everyone it's best if you take a break. Because other people don't need to be subjected to your freak outs. (And you do not need to be a shut in or "unsuccessful" to struggle with those issues, and it kind of annoys me when it's implied otherwise).

Finding out my favorite aunt spent a year refusing to go to a real doctor and instead self treated breast cancer with eating clean, praising jesus, and essential oils and now is finally returning to conventional medicine now that she is really sick and in advanced stages. I do not really know if angry is the right word for what I am but I am pretty full of rage for MLMs and Pray Away the X theology of any type.

I agree with @sparks and @faraday but man have I seen some spectacular screaming-ass shitfits, harassment, and temper tantrums vomiting everywhere by players at even a game /closing/. How DARE that staffer CLOSE that game rather than HAND IT OVER, they are evil because that game belonged to US not THEM! To a very unhealthy level. Like the people who act like an author owes them more books, or whatever.

Are they outliers, yes. But I do think there is a not insignificant number of people who may not act like a total asshole, but do indeed believe that a game is owned by the players who play on it just as much if not more than the people who run it. I think then a game's population reaches a certain level of expectation of that is ironically when it tends to go way out of control, because people no longer give a shit about any kind of vision but their individual one, and that gets real chaotic real fast.

I actually do think no xp or other goodies should be given in beta, which is supposed to be testing and not hard open and usually pre advertising. It sets up an unfriendly environment to "outsiders."

I don't like erasure of works, because they often whitewash the problematic concepts that people are trying to protect others from.

I think one of the most amazing impacts that I've ever seen (like really seen, as in watching the faces of the students during this presentation) in a classroom setting was in college, when one of the professors I was helping in our department, showed about an hour of extremely horrifically racist Bugs Bunny and other famous cartoons, complete with the year in which they were displayed for the public. Including stuff into the 60s. Especially the stuff from the 40s-60s, because the discussion immediately beforehand was about what impacts people thought the media culture had on black and Hispanic people in particular during a time period that is often kind of idealized as perfect Happy Family time.

I knew what to expect, since I'd been through this class before with her, but it still felt like a punch in the gut to see familiar, childhood characters in this context because that kind of thing was scrubbed almost (but not completely) from the reruns that I was watching as a kid like less than a decade later. I never saw that displayed in a class were people did not have visible expressions of shock and some people always cried. Even in a very racist city in a racist state. But none of them forgot it either.

Same thing with reading certain stories and works /when also accompanied by a discussion about events going on in the world at the time/.

Removal allows white people in particular to pretend things weren't so bad or didn't happen.

I don't like it.

Some of this may be more an American problem than anything else. It still amazes me to be living in the Seattle area and having 4 kids go through public schools and talk for less than a day about what happened to the Native Americans in this area, no discussion of how treaties came into being and why and the conflicts around them that persist to this day, the impacts of racism on those communities. We don't talk about the sundown laws in our state that lasted longer than Jim Crow laws. And at my eldest's 18 birthday party, where he chose to go to a Japanese restaurant in Seattle that has been in operation for 100 years except for the time period that the family was interned in Idaho, one of the kids that was attending asked "What's that?".

I do not feel the same about modern authors, I'll be honest. But I think works that were the "products of their time" should still be looked at preferably with the context and the ugliness highlighted. People need to see it.

I actually have a lot of tolerance for GM styles, as a player.

I really super appreciate scene and game runners though, who are communicative about their styles and up front.

What I mean by this:

• Not baiting and switching. If something is going to be a spectating scene vs participatory, disclose that. I think people are afraid that if everyone knows that it's participatory nobody will come, and it's true you will draw a different crowd, but it'll be people who are prepared to enjoy it for what it is (or people who can't be assed to read). But do not bill something as participatory when it's not going to be.

• Timing expectations. Is this a no limits time clock for poses (as in the person can start writing WHEN its their turn and spend however long (30 minutes? Hour? More?) they want to write it up? Or is it a timed countdown to pose/respond/roll or be skipped? I personally really love it when the expectations are stated up front because it helps me gauge whether or not I have the bandwith to be there.

• Slots. Are they limited? Will that limit be adhered to, or is it totally wide open?

• Start times/late arrivals. How are they kept/dealt with? There's no right answer here, but again, I find it helpful as a player to have that stated up front, just so it helps set expectations appropriately.

Once I've experienced a GM for a couple of times usually I have all my answers to the above, but when I see someone proactively giving guidelines/expecations it's really impressive and even if I decide the parameters aren't for me at that time? I always feel like my time as a person has been respected.

Player pet peeves of mine:

Not reading the guidelines/expectations that are put out in the PrP/Scene advertisement/sign up thingy. Or paying attention to the GM OOC comments about any of that stuff in the beginning.

People not showing up until 30-60 minutes in with NO warning or communication who then are combative or upset at me when I tell them that we've moved on from an easy entry point for them and I will not disrespect others' time by shoehorning them in awkwardly. If people give me heads up in advance I can make arrangements. On the fly, not so much. I usually do not wait more than 15 minutes for stragglers. And once I give up a limited slot to someone on the waiting list, I do not let the original back in unless there was some communication in advance and an arrangement has been made. Most people don't argue it, but there are some and they're really super aggressively annoying.

A side thought. Why the fuck do some people demand that game makers must create/build/eternally run things in order to not be "a flake". While you do have some extremely very few people who are truly capable of doing all three well (newsflash: most people who think they do don't), most games would be better served by allowing different people to have their strengths instead of demanding everything from the person "in charge."

I think the weird expectation that whoever opens a game must be an excellent thememonger, meta plot ideas and management person, ooc damage control, grid and systems and adaptation manager, etc has done more to damage the hobby (and encourage control freaks who have no business running a game that people other than sycophants wander in to play on) than someone who is particularly strong in one area opening a game, when it could be encouraged/not taken as flaking or failure if they then stepped back and handed off other operations to people equally as talented in those areas.

I hate the feeling of overwhelming dread that makes me just want to run far far away in my interactions with people RL or online. For me this external stress is really starting to manifest as feeling like I should apologize for my existence because everyone is annoyed with me and wants me to go away, which very very easily leads to a self-fulfilling prophecy. I'm sad that this is happening just as inertia seemed to be wearing off but I think I'm also supremely burnt out and stressed AF at work, and even more aggravating it is happening at a time when things are /improving/ at least demand wise. Hopefully memorial day will help, but I think I'm just going to have to suppress rabid brain weasels as far as who is mad at me for what in basically all parts of my life/how much awfulness I can expect until July when I will be able to take a significant chunk of time in vacation. It's pretty gross to feel this way, and even more important to not put it on anyone else in my life. I had thought even about talking to the doc again about meds (I have taken them with huge success for other major depressions and then just weaned off afterwards) but then I realized it's not like they are going to help since probably 90 percent of this is situational, and just is not going to get super better until I have a chance to destress from work.

I also think that it's vastly underestimated the strength of the response that people have when something previously run by volunteers is made for-profit, or where it is expected that the community financially support a couple of professional staff. Having been through that conversion process--it is very ugly. You run the risk of turning off some of your best and most loyal supporters and audience for a new one (which is fine, sometimes it needs to be done).

So it's very important to weight the losses that you will invariably have for the gains you will make. Yes, it would be great to get more under 30s in. Are you willing to say "fuck you bye!" to a huge amount of older people who have been the mainstay and who have been involved for decades, for people you aren't sure will stay out the year, just for the sake of improving your game demographics?

What problem are you trying to solve by monetizing or encouraging monetizing as a whole? Will this lower or raise the barriers to entry both for the person trying out the hobby, and the problems faced by game creators or potential game creators?

The truth is, that while it is important to get new blood in, it's actually pretty important to keep old blood in too. Might not want to shit too much on the nostalgia/current players, in the hopes that you might somehow find the formula to bring in a handful of extra younger people (who may or may not be great assets to the community, just like everyone else).

Personally out of all the ideas here, I think someone creating a MUSH with a theme that younger folks would recognize/respond to is the best one. I know a ton of young players that started trying out new-to-them but old fogey themes because they really got into mushing based on something that they did like.

Also, frankly, 20 somethings are not aliens from another planet who can't relate to older people or who are less capable of trying new things? It doesn't mean we can't/shouldn't adapt to the tools we have now (AGAIN THANK YOU FARADAY, even 10 years ago I /never/ would have thought I'd be able to be working on my own place, and now that is a goal that I can actuall achieve), I love all the incorporation of web based stuff on Arx, ect.

I think continuing those innovations and empowering the young folks IN the hobby to set up /the games with themes that they would like to see/ (and checking them out/supporting/playing there when it happens) might be the best way to get more people in. Rather than thinking they need to be spoonfed. In my experience, they need it less than older people.

I think you should prepare for a huge influx and rush at the beginning, and then just do the best you can to choke down drinking from the firehose until a good number of people will wander away in the first few months, and then you'll know what your base size is more realistically. This surge can be a real gamekiller/burnout machine if you are not mentally prepared for how you will deal.

Because I do absolutely believe you will have a huge rush at the beginning at the very least!

Tomorrow Eldest gets to be filmed walking across the stage to get his diploma, which will then be spliced together with all the others for the webstreamed graduation ceremony next Tuesday. Though after the broadcast, they're doing a car parade for the new grads through town ending at the high school itself, where they'll get to wave/shout at their teachers one last time as they go through the loop. My senior has been kind of bummed about the cancellation of every senior milestone, but is actually super happy about this one, since we get to decorate the cars for the most part however you want.

@Griatch they may be simple for you, but not everyone is wired the same way. Or has the same valuation of how they'd like to spend their time. For me, cognitively and energy wise, at this point in time, it would not be worth the investment, because I have no interest in applying it in the greater world. I am old. There are things that interest me less than coding for $$, but not many, though I like to hear about other people's exploits and am happy to have people talk shop around me (hubby is a software developer and MU* code-y person). I really appreciate things being made accessible, so that I can learn how to do most basic stuff for game, I super duper appreciate the web interface tools, which helps my mind organize it better. It's fun to experiment with even if I have no interest in developing skills beyond it. I'm okay if there are people out there who think that clearly any game I run/create that I didn't code from the bottom up really isn't "mine," though I do sort of wonder why anyone (except other coders) would give a shit about that. Is that kind of like the old "OMG if you use AOL you're not a real internet person" stuff?

I kind of liked Eldritch's system of small # of grid squares that represent huge areas, with smaller builds (such as houses or businesses or other relevant spaces) branching off so you didnt have a shitload of street rooms to walk through. People fussed a lot on chan about that, but I bet there's be less griping about it now.