@Arkandel yes, people are seeking closure that is simply never going to happen. I count myself in that, because I'm stupid. And yet, also human. However, I have seen this play out many times in RL, and also know it's part of the process. People will sort out eventually where they are most welcome. But honestly, it's been like 2 months. For some people that's enough time, for others it won't be. Maybe I shouldn't care, but I do.
@reimesu what people protecting mental health? That has nothing to do with why the other board was created either.
A situation got out of control. Many things could have been handled better. They were not. And now there are two places with a lot of overlap and some distance that was a long time coming. There is still going to be hurt over it for awhile and it isn't one sided.
@reimesu I am sorry, but that is simply not true. A bunch of people were kicked out of this community many of whom never used profanity and in fact some of whom posted less frequently after asks to stop than a few posters who were never banned.
This board has been a community for them. A lot of people were reeling and wondering WTF happened. But the people who no longer felt welcome and those who were banned from here didn't want to lose community and so they made a new one.
The other community was starting to be formed before the new rules changes were even in effect.
Some people are going to be distressed about it for awhile. That's going to happen any time there's a blow up. And this one was a big one.
I would echo that the answer is different depending on what community you're talking about.
I also think that Gany is right on the money about time, and letting people sort themselves out how they wish.
The amount of active people on message boards is so very small. The vast majority of folks on games don't learn their lessons from message boards, they just report things after they see the light. It's an experiential thing, which is why it's hard for people to really learn until it happens to them or they have evidence from people who are trusted. So I think everyone is healthier and contributes to a healthier environment if they don't think they are going to be some savior of the community for what they post somewhere, because they're just...not going to be. It's just not how it works in human nature. I do think boards have a good role in helping people feel less alone when they have experienced something and can see other people chime in about theirs. But even then it's double edged because there will and always have been people that scoff and dismiss. Or people who use vagueness or twist the truth a bit to try and turn the critical eye towards people they don't like.
In a wider community, there's always going to be people that don't like each other, that annoy the shit out of each other, that hold grudges, don't trust, listen to their friends or whoever is giving them the best goodies over other people's experiences. There's misinterpretations. Hurt that isn't easily repaired. That's true for PTA groups, individual churches, community orgs, a dorm hall, friends-and-aquaintenaces networks, an office, ect.
Sometimes it's not really something to repair in the sense of making everyone feel at home and comfortable. Sometimes it's just accepting what you can do, what you can't do, and that other people are where they are and it's very possible that there really isn't a "one true way" to do/look at/feel about most things.
Yeah. I think that's why I am not sure one can "incentivize" failure per se. (Also, if we're talking about coded stuff like rewards for purposefully bombing rolls, I think there's also an element of that's great for that person involved, but what about the other people in the scene/on the team who didn't denotate their roll and were striving to accomplish the objective, who now don't get to do so AND also don't get the reward since they didn't choose to fail oocly? It gets complicated real fast. Especially if the bomber doesn't want their PC perceived ICly as a saboteur, I'm not so sure they should get to have all those benefits for choosing to be an ooc one.)
I think if we want to IC failure to be the story driving tool that it has so much potential to be, that is far less about policy and code and almost everything to do with culture both player side and staff side.
I think it would be helpful if people stopped making value judgements about someone who feels a momentary pang when something doesn't go their way. A lot of people are quick to jump aggressively on the FAILURE IS FUN!!!!!!!! soapbox (especially when it comes to how other people should feel). I know I can tend to be that way because I personally enjoy hamming up botches and the like personally (I'm sure that's annoying in its own right).
But some people just don't have lucky dice. Or they have less access to scenes that they get to participate in that are very relevant to who their pc is/what they were built for. Yes, failure is an awesome character development arc, but what if you only get to use those skills every 6 months or so, and you just by luck of the roll fail every single use of that skill in front of the group. Unless it's an open +sheet game they don't KNOW that the PC is competent. And people sometimes can and do make comments when someone looks like they've not invested in the skills (unless the game cracks down on people being unkind about rolls).
After seeing one friend in particular who is really awesomely statted get to finally go to a really important, pivotal battle scene and fail everything and as a result get KOed early (while keeping a brave OOC face on and cheering other people on, but feeling horrible about it and being sidelined early), I think people should have some compassion too. That's an extreme, but I do think a lot of people do feel a momentary "awww, man!" moment even for a single failure during an IC character skill choke.
I think it's easier to fail ICly when people aren't judgey ooc about the failure itself, and when they're supportive about someone taking a moment to shake it off, and then move on while making sure there's opportunites for more RP. The reality is that while failure should lead to more growth opportunities, often times it really usually doesn't, once the scene is over it's done (esp. if was a staff run scene) just like awesome success in a scene doesn't always. I think a supportive environment can do a lot to make whatever it is more fun though.
Right now I have a lot going on in my life.
Since initially needing some time out, there has been a train of stuff that has not eased. I got very ill with a viral non-covid illness. I'm dealing with some stuff with my kids. I have some medical stuff going on where my stress level is quite literally endangering my health/significantly shortening my lifespan (Welcome to everyone else's existence, right?)
I wish I was in a better space to argue, advocate, keep up, ect. But honestly I'm not. O feel like the time I've needed and my slowness is hurting the community now. It is hard to see blame being assigned to Gany for many things that
Please understand that the decision of having more uniform behavior expectations is something I advocated for because of the frequent spillover that were becoming consistently harder to mod (behind the scenes). So if people want to blame someone if things continue in that vein, blame me.
If you are angry that things weren't turned on fast enough or responded too immediately, blame me. I'm the one that hasn't been around. There's no nefariousness by gany or derp with that, and I hope you will believe there's no ill intent on my end either.
While I have laughed, cried, been depressed, been proud of helping to moderate MSB at various times it never felt like a burden and I never dreaded it. That's changing and eveb though i know it is 90 percent non-MSB situational and timing feelings, i know ultimately that's not going to help anyone feelings, and I have been feeling like I've fallen down in so many other places and ways right now at least I can step back here before i do more damage. My feelings for the community haven't changed but when it feels like I'm a hindrance rather than a help it's time to let go. Especially when if I can't be around as much to help. As much as sometimes I want to wring some necks around here at times I do still care about the community here and too many individuals friends and acquaintances to name.
I'm not leaving MSB. I am an infrequent discord user but if someone enjoys me as an individual and wants to keep in touch because they are or they want to in general I'm happy to share my discord username thing via PM. I currently play on Arx and plan to continue to, as RP remains a source of stress relief and enjoyment.
If you want me to send you my stupid meme and pictures of cats and fun game stuff you're more than welcome to contact me, but i don't plan on talking about current events here bc it is painful for me too and I am not in a place where I can adequately process for me much less help others.
I am locking this topic for now, since honestly it doesn't seem to have much of a suggestion, seems to contain a personal attack.
I understand there is anger and/or upset out there. There are a lot of things to unravel. I'm still only partially able to be here due to first illness and now rl being extra, same as everyone else.
It's fine to mention all the ways you don't like something, but we have asked that people don't engage in personal attacks. I don't really see any other way to interpret this one.
Today at work:
In morning carline, one of my students happily told me, "Hey, Miss Mietze, are you ready for the new virus? IT'S COMING FOR US ALL." (said in a very chipper tone) When asked if it was like a computer virus, illness causing virus, or what, he just told me "you'll see!"
During morning work time, two of the kids got in a shouting argument about whether Elsa (from Frozen) was from Guatemala or not. I have no idea where even Guatemala entered this. I thought she was from Arindelle or something like that. When I asked why they thought she lived in Guatemala, they both turned to me and said "what is Guatemala anyway?" and I was like "you tell me, you're the ones arguing about it," and they looked at ME like I was nuts.
Then at circle time we were talking about living/non living things, their characteristics, ect, and went around the circle where everyone got to name a living thing. Then we went around the circle and the kids named a non lving thing. "Paint!" "Carpet!", "the wall!", and finally one of my most sweet faced girls yells out (extremely happily) "DEAD PEOPLE!"
We had a really long recess time today. It wasn't the weirdest day I've had this year, but. At least it is pretty fun.
Also the vampire prince failing a frenzy roll when someone pulled out a cell phone. In the middle of court. What happened after the scene itself was over was not super fun but that particular rp moment was pretty funny as people rightfully turned tail and gfto.
A pc i had on a shadowrun game who was part of the Russian mob was part of a group that kidnapped an orc pc and then tortured him to get some info out of him. Iirc he was just slaying his rolls and icly we took a break and my pc dumped a bucket of soapy water on him to clean him up.
As his racial allergy (and he took it at the maximum level)...he was allergic to soap. We offered to retcon that but he thought it was absolutely hysterical and the best death ever. We never got the info but he did reroll a pc to join us.
And yes this was a noncon game like Jesus christ probably about 23 or 24 years ago lol
Hi all.
I just wanted to pop in to explain that the last couple of days I have mostly been away due to needing to try to avoid emotional spillover over what has been happening here into areas of my life I couldn't afford to be a wreck for. (Honestly the community here IS part of my "RL" so it's not that this community isn't an important and valid part of my life).
This was NOBODY'S FAULT. Some of it was the worst timing in the world due to things outside of MSB stretching me very thin emotionally and mentally. NOBODY IS TO BLAME FOR THIS. I want to make this clear.
I told Gany immediately when I could feel myself entering the danger zone (Again this has everything to do with things going on for me health wise and not anyone's fault). We were in the process of discussing things when things started to cascade (I wasn't keeping up with the boards at the time because I was more paying attention to our conversation and when I finally had a chance to start to catch up I became overwhelmed and knew I was having an extremely out of sync and inappropriate mental/emotional reaction and I needed to go quickly because none of you deserve having to deal with that too on top of everything else that was going on here and more importantly out in the world at large). I was immediately supported. I feel that this is important for people to know.
In retrospect maybe I should have posted a note but i could not at the time. I'm struggling with posting this one. But it wasn't anyone else's place to disclose why I was suddenly absent.
I'm hoping that after the weekend I will have at least some of the things outside of MSB settled more so that I have space to catch up and be able to think intentionally rather than being pure reaction.
I'm here because I really do care about this community, because it has been such a vital part of my larger community of support in my life (and people in it will continue to be no matter what or who stays or goes). I am asking for your patience that I need some time to digest/catch up and need some space to deal with a few immediate things outside of it and to try to pull my shit together a little more before I can tackle that. this would still be happening probably even everyone had been hugging fluffy bunnies and unicorns the last 48 hours. MSB blowup has been merely the sprinkles on the fully frosted cupcake of the rest of my mental/emotional state, but it was something that I couldn't handle at that time and need a little more breathing. I am pretty sure that you guys understand.
@ganymede I think that depends on the viewpoint. I think it is hard for humans to unentangle all threads of racism from how they other people. So I would expect to relate to it in some way with how I see racism/classism/colonialism/oppression all around me right now. It is complicated and often has crossover.
I do not expect gamerunners to totally leave elements of that behind, but I do expect to not have to sit through thinly veiled racist stereotype garbage from RL dressed up as fantasy.
While I don't like when fantasy races seem to be just a little too rooted in RL racial stereotypes and bugaboos, tension between different sentient species is something that doesn't bother me. I think it is a really good way to explore stories, especially as a human player, because I do think that putting people into boxes and othering people who aren't in our boxes is inseperable from human existence in many ways. I don't really like utopian game settings at all, so there just needs to be some sort of tension in a game for me to enjoy it, just for my own preferences in what I like to explore in my RP.
Colonialism/survivalism on an alien planet? Cultural and class classes? Conflict and old alliances/hatreds between different peoples of a realm? I do tend to gravitate towards that in a setting.
However, if the setting writers wrote things that seemed specifically steeped in racial slurs/stereotypes of RL I'd probably not feel comfortable playing in that.
I decided to not renew my contract for next year, and instead drop to subbing (I can still work 40 hours a week if I want to, realistically, because the short staff issue isn't going away anytime soon).
I feel guilty because it means we'll have to buy health insurance through the exchange instead of it just coming out of my paycheck. But I just couldn't do it. Too many things were falling through the cracks, and I am so burnt out (and there were some program changes coming next year that like 2 years ago I wouldn't have cared about but it's not 2 years ago right now).
I have destroyed my health in the last 2 years. I have let a lot of things go that I used to maintain a higher standard on. My family has suffered due to my exhaustion and burnout. I kind of wonder if I can ever recover health wise, and if I have any shot I have to have more time to do it.
I'm so tired, guys. It really sucks to have so many people at work say how great I do the job when in fact I know I'm well below my own standard. I can be awesome, which is why it's not total shitshow right now. But I can't keep on destroying myself to deal with the stress. I'm simultaneously relieved but also just feeling like a loser who couldn't hack it. And I know how very privileged I am to be able to consider dropping from full time scheduled hours to subbing.
I love what I do currently. It was my first professional field out of college. But to do it, you can't be a shell of yourself. It's not a hard job but it is high demand. And I've got a lot of other demands in my life that I need to take care of.
Would maybe stating that as a specific goal for the scene be helpful? It might sound awkward doing it at first, because I know as a GM many of us want to be more hands off and not forcing any particular outcome. But encouraging people specifically that one of your hopes is to see people interacting with people new to them in an active way isn't bad, I don't think. If that is one of your goals! At least I personally don't find having OOC goals objectionable for a scene (we rescue this person, we steal this thing, we pose at/acknowledge people outside of our regulars a few times during the course of it)
I know the success of that is probably highly dependent on the individuals in that group though.
Compared to when I entered mushing in the mid-90s (and to be fair, it probably very VERY much depended on what genre), there are more normal not-staff-never-want-to-be-staff that I see running plots for people than ever. Like with very few exceptions most games rather depend on that, tbh.
I think though that a lot of problems people are having that I personally observe (or am told when I ask a person if they'd like to try running something) fall into a few categories:
*Nobody's running the types of things I want to play in, so I don't get to play in the types of things that I run for other people and I'm frustrated about that. (this sometimes morphs into the dreaded OMG this place is populated by people who don't take RP as seriously as I do, since they like different and less meaningful things, if one isn't careful.)
*If I run something publicaly, it tends to get cluttered up fast with players I don't like. (who don't engage and probably are going to come to MSB and bitch about how boring all PrPs on this mush are within 5 minutes of finishing the 3 hour scene that I had to pester them to pose/do their action/ect the entire time or who would wait for 40 minutes to give everyone a 1 liner pose that didn't react to anyone else's pose)
*I'm over here working my ass off, running a ton of stuff for people to help take stuff off staff's plate, but it looks like instead of inviting me or securing me a spot in stuff that other people or staff are running, they're just doing stuff with themselves/their usuals.
*The system rules/lore is confusing and I get anxiety just thinking about putting myself out there that way as a storyteller.
*As a player participant I see people do no-shows, act like entitled assholes OOCly, try to run over/backtalk the ST, bitch about how they never get to do anything fun on a public channel while participating in this STed scene, argue with the ST over rolls/mock or not shut up OOCly about rolls, ect ect--fuck that, I don't want to risk having to deal with people like that.
The rules lawyers and drifter-offters have always been a part of the hobby since I started, but I will say that in the last couple of years I've seen a decline in ooc courtesy towards STs that is many times extremely shocking to me. But I mean, I think that decline is society wide as people are just at the end of their rope in a lot of things. I don't blame people for not wanting to stick their neck out and spend the energy that they have far less of knowing that there's a medium amount of risk that their efforts are just not going to be good enough and people will make that very obvious in their discourtesy.
I am exhausted in every way possible(mental/emotional/physical/spiritual), feeling very down on myself in many ways, fighting both all the literally fucking trees in my area plus some weird illness that's going around our school but isn't covid.
I just want to sleep and maybe have carrot cale for breakfast for a few days.
So I have never engaged in romantic/TS scenage on any NPC I have ever run, so this is purely conjecture on my part.
But if someone utilizes static (as in those npcs don't change 'ownership' between staff members) NPCs on a game, and there aren't restrictions on types of play/relationships to get involved in, I would guess that one of the reasons why someone might elect to RP out entire scenarios vs FTB (BIG ASSUMPTION HERE of player full and enthusiastic consent, ability to say no, ect) is because they're not there to just type "dirty words" at someone else.
It's part of the story, and it's a part of the story that both parties are okay with graphic content about.
So no, in that case, the staffer in question wouldn't just go TS someone willynilly because it's not describing sexual content that is the point--it's the interaction between those two characters.
THis is one of my frustrations sometimes with how we talk about TS in the community.
I have never engaged in graphic sexual content with any PC of mine JUST for the sake of itself. The characters involved weren't interchangable (For me anyway) with whoever had the time and was available right then. It was part of the story, and I (whether wise or not) decided that I didn't mind playing it out at that particular time. I presume that many people are the same way (and btw I think it's okay too if people DO just want to type erotica and their enjoyment has nothing to do with the relationship building between the two PCs, ect). That doesn't stop people from smearing others with the "ALL THEY WANT TO DO IS TS WHY DON'T THEY GO TO SHANG" crap. And I do get annoyed when people presume that if you do not have a problem with RPing out sexual content when appropriate that means you only want that sort of thing, or that it monopolizes your time. Because most of the time, even with people who do it a lot, it doesn't.
@krmbm I like court scenes and meeting scenes too bc I'm sick like that. However people do join L&L games to get their dynastic/game of marriages/procreation kicks on too. So still I don't find either less valid or legit than the other. Except for usually people are less whiny about TS scenes being boring/bad unless they're trying to attack or isolate the person being complained about. Meanwhile people feel compelled to tell peolle including runners about all the ways they don't like the court/large social scene they're voluntarily attending.