Best posts made by mietze

I also prefer consent based (which can indeed have systems also, as far as negotiating/what you can accomplish, ect). But as others have said you will have people who for various reasons will totally lose their shit at such an idea. To be fair, people will lose their shit just as much (sometimes even the same people who hate consent-based and think it's for losers or whatever) at systems that take away some player autonomy over their PCs actions (the dreaded social skills) and claim that only they should have any say in how their PC reacts to anything.

So honestly I think the vast majority of folks here that I've seen DO actually /prefer/ limited consent, or capped non-consent, take your pick.

Staff also needs to be prepared to deal with some of the burden. Realistically they are going to need to be able to deal with over and over again incoming people’s freak outs or somewhat oocly motivated crusades. Whether that’s about a particular character or something that’s touched on in a plot, etc.

That’s annoying even with the most mundane topics. But when you add in the emotion and stress level of something that’s a very big problem right now outside of people’s gaming lives, that puts an energy into it that can be very difficult to deal with (as player or staff) and that can also increase staff stress/ability to respond without snapping.

@Apos, I think it depends on the context. I’ve had mostly really good experiences with my own play in this regard, and the bad ones I’ve had tended to be people who I think would have had issues regardless.

Playing a half-caste on a Fading Suns game was pretty nice. I felt most of the people there gave it good balance. There was a lot of leeway for pc views, which was great. Some enforcement of prejudice largely by npcs in scenes (not run by me. For some reason using npcs myself to discriminate against my own pc individually seems, I don’t know. It feels off, like the people who use npcs in scene to suddenly attack/Force other PCs to rescue in scene, etc. when the whole group of PCs is being looked askance at/unwelcome, that is a different story and pretty fun).

I do agree with others that yes there are discriminatory PCs that go over the line oocly, but that a just as annoying/bad problem are the people who pick heavily restricted PCs and then throw fits that they are restricted in what they can accomplish or that not everyone comes to fight on their behalf/rescue/defend them.

I think a lot of times people pick these types of PCs because they anticipate being different/rare/unique/easy in to a special place (or in the case of subservient PCs they think it’s a good way to “learn the sphere/group/theme”). Unfortunately to do it well without imposing on other people oocly it takes a lot of ic and ooc work.

Again, I enjoy these PCs a lot. I have no problems with any kind of subject, really—as long as there is ooc consideration and discretion involved. It’s just that there are a lot of people who are incapable/unwilling to take into account other folks’ comfort. Which is why I think it’s important that staff set very clear boundaries around any kind of the classic triggers of RP. (Loss of autonomy via mind control or domination, including slavery, powers, rape, etc)

@arkandel said in Regarding administration on MSB:

Either way we've seen, again and again, these little petty dislikes go back and forth as the feeling is returned until they become toxic. A perceived microaggression just gets to the point of groups - since people get their friends involved, too - dogpiling each other, until loners get flamed sometimes right out of existence. For nothing.

Honestly, I think that this is one of those things that people get or don't. I don't know that having ooc chat here or elsewhere really helps humanize folks to people who want to keep things very distinct, or who are incapable of separating the person from who they are online.

I think I have met well over...50 mushers at this point. Not at a big gathering like a meetup at a con, but over dinner, many times over providing a crash space/meeting place/hospitality for people passing through. I have yet to be in a situation where I have regretted meeting or spending time and attention on someone RL, that I met on a game or via gamers, even if they hurt me later.

I have met people who I frankly found annoying as fuck online who have become dear friends. People who I greatly enjoyed/enjoy online who I find to be obnoxious in person. People who are well regarded online that i've seen behave absolutely horrifically in person, and those who are or have been online pariahs with whom I enjoyed RL company.

But I am a people person. I love people. I enjoy people. I enjoy and care for a wide swath of people of various social skills and presences. It's not hard for me to hook into and feel genuine warmth for a community, and so I love reading up on what folks are wanting to share they're up to.

But it is not bad or invalid for people to have preferences the other way. Maybe because of history, or inclination, or whatever. It's okay to not be a people person. I don't think not being interested in the RL details of an online acquaintance's life makes you a horrible or antisocial person, or at risk of becoming more toxic. (As we all know, some of the most toxic people online thrive and must have that community/online connection to do what they do).

I would be upset if someone came here over my game or me.

My first reaction would be anger that they didn’t talk to me first, but to be honest, I’d also be more internally sad that obviously I had not been behaving in game or as staff in a way that the person felt that they could or would like to come to me first.

I think one of the things to strive for as staff is that you get to the second stage very quickly and don’t linger too long on the first. If that makes sense.

As a game owner, I'd think the atmosphere and safety of the /game/ is the prime concern, since players come and go. (Also it's my experience that when a situation gets to the point of a ban or boot being needed, the player who was on the receiving end of the unwelcome behavior probably will have the game ruined for them for awhile anyway. Usually it takes repetitive times for someone to even make a report, instead of just leaving.)

It's irresponsible in the extreme to allow a harassing, boundary violating player to remain on game just because the victim says don't ban them "because of me." Well, it's not because of them. It's because the actions of the other person show untrustworthiness and poor judgement and you don't feel that you want that individual on your game.

Sometimes people say that, when really what they want is to be told very firmly that it's not their fault.

I admire strongly coded systems but honestly it’s very intimidating and stressful for me as a player. I could lie and say it’s bevause I’m old and tired and the learning curve is steep but even in my young pup days I couldn’t get into firan either.

I don’t know why this barrier exists for me. I love faraday’s system because it is very simple. It takes away all ooc stress for me in combat, etc. that kind of code I love. But all the moving off screen parts (except for narratives, like rfk’s beats, which I don’t think I’d consider “coded” to be honest) tend to fluster me and make me feel even more useless because I know it will take me so long to “get” without having to ask every single time, which is stressful for me.

I recently tried/am trying Arx again which is not even that heavily coded, and it’s a huge mental barrier. I think I would be struggling even without my time crunch and fucking annoying constant illness issues, but that plus knowing I need to learn more stuff that’s not intuitively documented (for me) is just...intimidating.

This isn’t the fault of this game (nor was my huge intimidating factor at Firan Firan’s fault.). Most people can learn this stuff better than me, and I can see how and why people like it. I just wish it did not have the effect of massive performance anxiety/stress on me personally that it does.

I don’t think there is a wrong or right level of code for a game! I think game runners should pick stuff that enhances their organization/management styles or that they enjoy. There will be plenty of people who can learn, and happy less stressed staff is worth it, IMO, for everyone’s health.

I think each of these scenarios is very different.

In regards to IC leadership, I think the onus is on staff to put forth some effort and a) think about what is it they want from having ic leadership vs npc and b) using those thoughts to come up with clear guidelines to be published. Ic leadership has a strong ooc component to it usually. This should not be an unspoken expectation but a very open one. What are the staff’s behavior expectations oocly and icly? What are the activity requirements icly and oocly? What recourse does the leader have from staff to get help in dealing with oocly nasty people? (Because there will be some and perhaps many). Are there any restrictions on activity (person may not join every plot scene, can’t run those in which they star, whatever it is...name it.). And lastly there should be a very clear expectation of timing for dismissal and ideally an advanced directive in case of AWOLness.

I feel staff owes it to the game, the General players and most importantly ic leadership players to not be vague and to exert some leadership of their own before someone is handed a very visible leadership role. This should never happen randomly—no one should ever be pressured into taking on a role with fair or not some degree of ic/ooc crossover responsibility without informed consent.

I suspect many people will disagree with me, but having served in this capacity time and time again, sometimes very admirably and sometimes shittily, I think if you want to attract and keep quality player leadership you really need to put support structure in place.

In regards to subordinate/dependent play, I view this much like a D/s relationship (I know boo hissssss). Unhealthy people don’t talk about stuff and it’s often extremely fun in the beginning but quickly turns into a train wreck. It’s my opinion that the dependent pc is as if not /more/ responsible for generating fun for both and for not becoming a stupid liability without consent. Want to play a fuck up ghoul who’s constantly creating problems for your vamp? Please be sure you have the vamp player’s consent for that as play that she wants to engage in regularly. Or if you want to be a fuck up but don’t want to RP consequences or even have them, be sure to disclose that pre-sealing the deal. Because unless both people are ok with this, you’re going to be a very poor fit. Don’t want sexytimes/must have them? Disclose. Need things to be exclusive? Disclose—directly. Many people don’t want to do the ooc discussion. Sometimes that works out great, but most of the time that’s a hot ticket to idling out or unfun drama. Just because the pc is dependent doesn’t give the player an excuse to be. You must be prepared to be able to not rely on a single person for all your mush fun usually unless you want to smother that person off the mush. And again, it’s a great idea to talk IN ADVANCE about ooc exit strategies in case of not clicking or mushing time availablity change or AWOL.

I don’t know. Is there anyone who has gamed (mushing, mmo) for over 5-10 years who also enjoys the ooc community of things that doesn’t know someone or of someone who endangered their RL partnership or ignored rl problems in favor of escapism?

I probably know of at least 4+ divorces, 3 unplanned pregnancies (one by someone different than the current rl partner), many job losses, many severe relationship problems, many self-medication with games not drugs, getting involved with severely abusive people who were fine LTR but not so fine in person, etc.

It surprises me that it’s taken this long to be seen as a legitimate problem for some folks. I don’t like “addiction” being used for everything. But we recognize gambling/spending/sexual behavior/many other non-drug addictions so I don’t see why gaming can’t be one of them.

It’s been a long time since I was personally invested enough to be around hardcore people. But I do know of the following occupancies that have happened in the last 10 years:

3 people who have had CPS called on them, necessitating a visit (Which is always stressful regardless of whether or not it’s founded).

2 people who had their SOs contacted via social media.

1 person who had their place of employment targeted.

Numbers being given out for nuisance texts and the like.

So it can be a concern. This is crossover outsidevthe community. There have been many instances within the community of people attempting to ruin player reputations (arguably the most valuable thing you as a player have), posting of RL info and pictures without permission, etc.

It’s truly awful and nerve wracking to feel stalked, even if that person is a stranger and probably will never physically harm you. I’m lucky to live in a state that takes it seriously and to have friends with many contacts to help me wade through the difficulty of getting protection when someone’s primary way of stalking you is through online means. It’s unbelievably stressful. And this is just some dude that I met once as a teenager. So there is no sense of having been vulnerable(as many of us are on games/exploring rp) like their would be for someone who has this happen with a musher contact.

I think mushers are nicer than the average online community, but the bad ones are truly vile and can do a lot of damage.

I wish people would not discount how horrible it can be, when you are a target.

Honestly, we are humanity, why would we be better than it?

I do think we are a much nicer online group as a whole (meaning the mushing community, not necessarily a specific board community) than many.

I think gaming behavior can be very different than generic online behavior.

I have been surprised to see the “impersonal” antics of people I know when they’re somewhat anonymous on a forum with largely strangers or in what they think are closed door discussions.

But in my experience people behave /in community/, which I believe a game to be, mostly how they are in RL. Including the ability to mask their mean-spirited, manipulative, and/or very ill behavior for a time only to have it come pouring out once certain stressors/situations/temptations show up.

How someone treats someone else on a game when they are annoyed at them is a pretty good indicator of how I can expect to be treated myself at some point. Do they go out of their way to be manipulative? Are they passive aggressive or mean on channel? Do they whisper campaign? Do they make fun of the other person while still egging them on?

I dunno. I find it harder and harder to engage in Rp these days for various reasons but I find I'm less tolerant of people being oocly mean, and appreciate being with/around others who similarly try to avoid that. I guess edgelordianism and right swipe/left swipe is for the whippersnappers.

I really cannot think of many games (and can think of no non-invite-only WoD games) that were improved in the quality of story or play by allowing 100 percent free reign and first come first served oocly to rule the day. It tends to make for a very toxic and unfriendly game environment. Maybe that would have been brushed off 20 years ago, but with people being much more time crunched now, most people will not fight to get their goals met if there happens to be someone gross in charge (ICly or OOCly) they'll just leave.

I do think managed conflict is the way to go. But it's very very VERY work intensive (see RfK and the shitshow that developed once that attention slipped/the person doing it was no longer there). It would be nice to see some attempt to meet in the middle.

But that still requires staff taking on a lot of work. Like maybe coming down hard on undesirable OOC behavior and removing people who engage in it, so that even in a IC PvP intense game, there are very clear boundaries for making and maintaining a healthy ooc environment.

It all depends on what you want, and how much you can tolerate.

Sometimes if your primary interest is in more personal stories (that are unlikely to be affected by staffers anyway) and you've got a good group going who also don't care too much about absent (or incompetent) staff, then it's worth staying until the environment bugs you too much.

If you or people that you're enjoying RPing with find that you need more support/feedback than staff can give, it's probably time to move on.

But you can't MAKE anyone be more present. You cannot MAKE anyone get more engaged. So it's just a matter of how much you're fine kind of creating/being in your own bubble, and different people have different levels of tolerance for that.

For me, if I have the right group around me, who ST for each other, and where there's rich RP and PC development, I really don't care about active or absent staff.. And I have been known to leave games who had super active staff but I found their STing annoying or they seemed to be way too invasive. You will start to eventually lose people to staff check-out though, because I think most folks like to think there's at least a potential of staff responding to things you're doing!

@tinuviel why are you doing it wrong? It seems kind of silly to say that unless you as headstaff/game owner can create something to run in perpetuity in your absence/after you have long lost interest you're "doing it wrong."

Frankly the places that can survive for years without meaningful staff guidance have been some of the shittier ones I've played on.

This seems like a really strange player expectation to me, though I have seen people get very pissed about a game ending before they personally were ready for it to end because the owner didn't have time or interest anymore. Like behaving as if they were owed the game to go on because they were having fun and the owner was a horrible person for denying them this game going on past the owner's vision or ability to keep it running in a way they felt comfortable with.

I think that is a failure of those players to be that unappreciative/unable to handle disappointment, not a failure on the part of owner/headstaff.

No one is owed a game they didn't create and do not run existing in perpetuity.

I think people can truly adore unlikable characters based on how they're written (or like in the case of a TV show, how they are portrayed), in a love to hate way. For me an example would be John Smith in the latest TV series of Man in the High Castle. Do I like him as someone who I'd love to hang out with? NO. But he IS one of my favorite characters on that show because the way he is written and more importantly the actor's portrayal of him really make him enjoyable to watch on the screen. Do I feel the same way about dumbass Joe, who was probably meant to be more likeable/compelling? Nope. The chemistry or writing and portrayal just isn't there for me personally.

On a mush...I think that is trickier.

For one thing, some people who think of their PCs as protagonists actually come across as antagonists because of the way that they portray their PCs in actual interactions with others instead of just what's in their head. So if they decide to take on an antagonist it may be even more unpleasant/over the top. Or people may have to do that just to stand out from the crowd. It can be isolating. Sometimes you can do subtlety, but not very often in general on mushes. Which means someone who took on an antagonist thinking that they'd get a wide variety and depth to their play may be very disappointed. That can be super frustrating. Sometimes there is not enough going on outside of player-initiated play that white knights and do gooders are understandably starved for any kind of action they can finally get to exercise their own protagonism that they swarm. Even if you have someone who is happy to play up difference in goals/motivations/class/social status that is meant to play well in building RP tension that is thematic, it is often a lot of OOC labor to make sure that everyone else is having fun/not feeling pressure to be for or against/feels empowered to exercise what they'd feel IC even though it's not happy happy joy joy towards your PC, ect. I have found when I have played fringe PCs (never antagonistic, just...half-caste or other groups that the NPC society looks down on or fears) that kind of consideration/checking in to make sure I'm having a good time rarely if ever occurs. SO people gloss it over for fear of offending, or they go full tilt all the time in a way that can sometimes cross over into OOC.

I think if you're building a PC you actually want to play long term in a game, you /cannot/ have "antagonist" as your main core of what your character is. Like so many niche characters, that is super fun at first, but unless you have a lot of support sustaining it is probably going to be a problem. Definitely don't have antagonism be your "specialness". That's just a recipe for frustration or boredom for a variety of reasons.

@juke if there are enforced boundaries of good behavior, people may not ever see the tendencies, unless they have previous experience with that person. That's a good thing, if someone decides that being an asshole is not worth the consequences of getting removed from play.

I would much rather play on a place that very stringently enforced positive behavior standards than on a place that had no such boundaries but banned a shitload or people who were problematic elsewhere.

Or that it is okay to not like doing everything with everyone. You should be able to maintain civility around people you do not like but are not putting anything on you but their existence, on a game. But everyone should ideally understand that: 1) just because you see your person you want to engage indulging in certain play with other people does not mean that they need to do it with you, 2) you do not need to give your same time commitment to people you dislike as you do with people you do like, and in fact if you try to do this you are probably going to end up being needlessly mean or impatient with them because nobody hides their genuine dislike of someone as well as they think they do, and 3)it is always okay to tell someone to stop a behavior that is distressing to you even if they have not broken rules per se as long as that behavior is not "being on the same game" and as long as you are willing to take ownership of the fact that as you discuss you may need to yield as much as them, when it comes to things like shared spaces and people.

I agree , when expressing discomfort or dissatisfaction is used to try to "win" and get your way. But I think you can have situations where that isnt the case (which is what I assumed Faraday meant) and so if you want to negotiate and are up for that ooc, starting off with "change or leave" may not be the best approach. Because that can and does trigger people who would have perhaps worked with you to find something more agreeable or mutually agreed upon to just say "ok then, bye."

Its like starting off a disagreement or annoyance with your spouse or partner by throwing in a "we can just divorce or break up then!"

There are some people whose interpersonal skills are that bad, though, RL and in game and it can be a pretty bad experience to deal with them until they learn to negotiate/fight more...fairly? Constructively?