Or "who did you watch be assaulted/raped and then engage in her shaming/blaming afterwards?"
Which is probably even more people, men and women.
Or "who did you watch be assaulted/raped and then engage in her shaming/blaming afterwards?"
Which is probably even more people, men and women.
@Ominous said in The 100: The Mush:
To be actually constructive for once, I am growing into the opinion that if staff want to have PCs that aren't on the bottom of thr totem pole, the game needs multiple spheres and if someone has a character in a sphere, they cannot staff it.
I agree with you, but most people seem to be extremely against it. I don't know that it can be a realistic expectation to have staff not play in their sphere or be power restricted or disclosed in any way. Some of this is from the scarcity problem. So I think to a certain degree you really if you're going to play anywhere need to just mentally prep yourself for some (witting in some cases, unwitting/unintended in others) revolution around staffer alts no matter where you play. Even where alts are not disclosed, people do tend to always know, in my observation (maybe not everyone, but enough); and it's a natural inclination even with the best of intentions. I'm not sure why people are in such denial about it.
So maybe instead of being in denial, we should just embrace it. If you are having fun at a place, don't worry about it. If you don't get along with staff as players, no matter if they had a pc or not, your fun would probably be curtailed at some point, so maybe time to move on. Or if you're having fun at first, and then see things sliding to somewhere you don't like, instead of making it "OMG THEY ARE EVILLLLLLLLLL HOBBY WRECKERS" just..."I think their style of management sucks, and it irritates me and I hate it, so I'm moving on. Thanks!"
Finding a new "theme song" for one of my PCs that fits so perfectly with all the stuff going on around/through her.
My hubby has worked from home as a software developer for over 20 years, and yet is not an asshole incapable of respecting time or deadlines with people, whether he's working with them or not. So. My vote is just being selfish and used to being selfish.
Sadly on MU* it seems that there's a lot of people who will jump at the chance to hound a PC to make an exception for them, or allow them to "convert" them.
Once upon a time, one of my favorite PCs ended up getting turned from ghoul to vamp. Her sire was, male-ish, I guess but as far as anything pragmatic he was a giant rotting gross asexual monster. He did not even /have/ a human form, and all of his forms were of...well, rotten/moldy/motheaten things missing an eye and stuff like that. I did not believe his stories about how many people never bothered to READ those descs and instead were insistent on trying to find a cock to ride on. Until--I saw people like totally throwing themselves at him, and also being super hostile towards me because they were sure that I'd found it and was riding on it. Though who knows, as we never had any even remotely sexual or romantic RP maybe he was as good as Gany when it comes to RPing exploding into a bunch of spiders at orgasm or some other thing that I never got to see. So perhaps I should not judge too harshly but...damn.
Honestly it wasnt as bad as I thought it was gonna be!
@Goblin I always like to counter with YEAH bring back the good old days when you could beat your kids and your wife and it was just "private family business!" Bring back the good old days when people were regularly impaled on steering column and babies flew through windshields! Amen to no helmets, bring on the brain damage, yeah baby yeah! And fuck this EPA shit, bring back the orange rivers and dioxin fairy!!!
Honestly, while I am sure there's a possibility it could be a conspiracy, anyone who thinks that also negligence and incompetence on the facility's part wasnt just as or more likely clearly hasn't ever worked in or around corrections.
Not that pollution ever left, but there was some significant progress in some areas, within living memory. Also the same people who say that kind of dumb shit would be the first to be pissed if other people just flung their garbage out the car window by their house and other people let their dogs shit all over their yard.
I totally get the irritation over helicopter parents of the current time, I certainly had quite a few other mommies waggle their finger at me for letting my group of 3 older kids roam our property and a neighbor's (with permission) unsupervised (undeveloped land backed into a greenbelt with a shallow creek, kid paradise). And be shocked that I would drive preteens to the mall and then let them be while I sat in the bookstore cafe (I would have gone home but it's a long enough drive to make that irritating and hey, bookstore cafe).
But idealizing that era is stupid. Especially because of the domestic violence, and really gruesome injuries at low speed that are less prevalent.
I use soda but I really think pop is cute and wish I had grown up using that. My favorite great aunt called it sody-pop so my heart feels happy when I hear pop being used.
My youngest child came home with a pilgrims and Indians themes project in kindergarten this year school year in WA state. Which was horrifying to me on many levels.
Public school instruction in the US is extremely fractured, not only state by state but district by district and school by school. (My older kids' elementary school would have NEVER done that, and also at the time was the main site for a native american students and families group for the district, and those parents very generously shared resources with the teachers, students, and other families about PacNW history and current culture!!)
My teenagers were not taught about the Japanese detention camps in school until /9th grade/. My kids knew about it because we are part Japanese by heritage and there's a lot of opportunities to learn about it outside of school here if you know where to look, and we also always took advantage of the Japanese american cultural events put on by the community. Including talks by survivors! None of their schools ever invited these people to come and speak, even though there is a very very local connection. In high school in the 90s this was never taught (I wasn't in WA state though) not even in AP history. I only learned about it because I've always been a compulsive overreader.
Growing up mostly in southern and midwestern schools, we did not have MLK day, we had Lee-Jefferson-King Day (in that order, I shit you not) and I never received any sort of education in the civil rights movement (including in AP history or the advances history classes that didnt teach to a for profit test), aside from my own personal interest. Even though there were historical resources right in those cities where I lived that could have been utilized by the schools.
I did get to tour a plantation house in the 8th grade though.
I hope things are less stupid elsewhere than they are here. For fucks sake, even just looking at the narrow band of colonization to modern focusing solely on things involving white people the US has so little history to do (as opposed to, say, England, for example) you would think we could at least do that competently, but I do not think we manage usually. It's gross.
So I'm not surprised that many Americans in particular are just ignorant and fall back on fictional media and what they "see".
I think I would take anyone's stories about other people's sex lives well salted. Maybe even other people's stories about their own sex lives too.
I never played on any of the Star Trek games but I've played several different genres of space-theme/travel games and here are some of the issues I've noticed with keeping them staffed/focused:
*Having adequate staff or player storytellers to really allow for exploration/small-crew (by PC, not necessarily the actual size of vessel/crew) stories. Otherwise people come expecting that kind of play and when they don't get it and don't bring their own dedicated player STer team the allure of station play or planet-based cantina play fades fast and leads to a lot of frustration/jealous resource guarding.
*On military focused games just the sheer amount of people who either don't really get military basic play knowledge or conversely are extremely anal about everything being played "right" according to their own expertise (complicated by the fact that there are a ton of people who lie like hell about their military service). There can be a difficult balance to strike between that, how fun it is/isn't for people to write and publish reports, bottlenecking with continuous idling/changeover of command pcs, ect.
*I also think that Star Trek and Star Wars (more the latter than the former) can sometimes fall into the SO many things to do/focus on that the overall game can be difficult to stay focused on what the runners/staff had started out doing.
I mean these are pretty generic issues that can happen with ANY genre of game, but I've noticed that esp. with spacecapades games that when any of that slows down the play dries up really super fast, and for whatever reason, people kind of just expect more Staff-driven storytelling so they can do the exploring/war scenes/away missions.
Ugh, if you really must go on and on with a 90s WoD mush description level of wording describing about why you decided to like this recipe and what it means to you, and how virtuous and pennypinching (or granola or farm to table or WHATEVER) you are could you please put that at the END of the actual recipe instead of the beginning.
@Derp I agree. I remember how people fussed about wikis over a decade ago as they became more and more popular, ect but now its almost essential for wide swaths of the community. Getting away from the assumptive norm of live action is what I will predict happening in the next decade.
Last night an ICE agent posing as a homeless person tried to infiltrate the emergency family shelter that I volunteer at (it's in the basement of the church, we serve a warm meal to the families, and then two social workers from catholic community services stay up in shifts to make sure everyone is safe). The family in question (who I know and am in tears and distressed over) sensed something was up when she first started asking questions of the staff members (about a family that "looked white but wasn't") and fled out a side door literally leaving their dinner plates and everything but one backpack behind. They have two children under the age of 6 who are NOW FUCKING ON THE STREET god knows where. The staffers told the woman that she could not stay because you can only stay in this emergency shelter if you have a child under the age of 18 but she was invited to stay and have a meal at least. While the social workers were distracted checking in and setting up a brand new family with their paperwork, the ICE agent started asking invasive and harassing questions of the families. It was then that she was asked to leave. When one of the social workers went out for a break at 12:45 AM this morning (while the families were sleeping) she saw the undercover agent talking to two others beside an ICE marked van across the street.
I feel sick. There are not many family shelters in my area that will take people in on a walk in basis. Most of our families do not stay too long maybe a month or two until transitional housing or a real shelter beds open up. They can only stay from 8:30 pm till 7:00 am. They sleep on mattresses on the floor. It's not swank. Its emergency situations. These are the most vulnerable of the vulnerable. I volunteer on a recurring day of the week and when I was there last week I held a 3 month old baby so her momma could have a break and eat. Theres always kids running around and it's pretty fun for that. People are only here because the families do not want to be separated or the family housing is full.
I am shaking with anger right now. There's a special place in hell for people trying to make quota preying on families with children because they think they are easy targets. I feel sick. I guess I'm going to be making a lot of angry phone calls on Monday. And wondering how many more families wont come for help when they need it when word gets out.
If this makes you happy, then go fuck yourself.
I also think its good to keep in mind the 4-8 week activity hit that most new games seem to hit after they open, when the new shiny wears off. I think usually at the 3 month mark is where you get a more solid look at the realistic population of the game.
I have seen the ooh shiny surge kill games that weren't prepared for it. Or where there was worry something was wrong at the natural drop off and then scrambling to try to retain folks instead of concentrating on what it most interesting to the runners and the stable core. So while its good to take a look and be willing to retool (something every game should do once in awhile and that first threshold is a good time!) I wouldn't take attrition as a sign something is wrong.
And i would advise also reaching out to those still there to ask what unique things keep them coming back and if there's any suggestions for enhancing/strengthening that! As well as any things that impede your goals that you may not have seen on first pass.
Yeah, sorry for spelling error. I do really love feeding people, but not usually that way.
When I started playing, there were no wikis or even websites really on most of the games I played. CG was done by rooms on the game. You were often required to write lengthy bgs that some poor bastard had to read (or not).
Almost all action and plot was staff "judged". If you did any sort of combat or needed an adjudicated scene you were placed in a timestop that could last for hours, days, or in one case with me 4 weeks.
There was no posted logging. Or jobs/requests or trackers, or events code with reminders.
Harassment and especially unwanted sexual harassment was something to be expected and put on your big girl pants and tolerate and was not generally grounds for removal of the harasser. It was acceptable on many games to make pcs that were flagrantly racist and lgbtq-phobic stereotypes.
The hobby has functionally and socially changed a lot and will continue to do so and in some respects has a long way to go. Some of the changes l love. Some took some getting used to.
So again I think old timers might grumble a bit, but in my observation even those who won't shut up their complaining will still play, if padt behavior is any indication.
To have a square merchant account they do (or used to) require a link to a bank account.
PayPal doesn't and a lot of other money services do not.
Before I started working in the banking industry I had no clue how many people cannot open bank accounts because they get rejected for medical and other debts and collections. There are some special types of accounts that are not as strict as deposit/checking accounts but there are still people who don't qualify.
I've had the same banking account for like 25 years now and it would not ger taken away because I racked up medical debt--if I did though without an account then I'm at risk of being in limbo hell.
Anyway. All that to say is that there are a surprising lot of people who have to operate outside of traditional banks and must rely on paypal/venmo/ect.
There is a lot of fraud as a result, but a lot of it is against the people who get are vulnerable because they rely on those systems to hold funds/pay bills, who get scammed as much as people who have real bank accounts.