Posts made by mietze

I do think the attitude on all sides can be more easily linked to smaller (non big time corporate supported) games and loyal followers.

My husband is the sole developer (it's not his property, but he's the only developer that's working on it at this time, and it's been this way for jeez, like over 10 years now. It's a clunky PC historical strategy game. People just really don't play these types of games much anymore. But it has a devoted small following of a surprising age range of people. (Many MUSH similarities here). Nobody is making a lot of money off this game (hence why the current people who own the rights will only pay one developer and one artist to work on it, ect).

Most people are cool, understanding, excited about mods they themselves can make, enjoy it immensely despite the olden days format, ect. They give good feedback as various things are rebuilt, not to turn it into an MMO or anything, but to make it with more options, updated campaigns, some graphics updates, a lot of behind the scenes engine updates, ect.

But there are a special few screamers that are really horrible. Vomiting all over the forums, harassing people, always with a major entitlement complex about how things aren't moving fast enough, how they're not getting big corporate look/upgrades for this inexpensive and old school game, insulting my hubby by name because he's on the credits (and he does take the time to respond to people on the forum, because again, small community of pretty much fun/nice/quirky people from all over the world, ect) and treating him like garbage because the features that the team has decided to bring with the $$ they have available doesn't line up with what the screamer wants, ect.

We have SO FUCKING MUCH of that in MUSHing. I really don't think we need to encourage more. Enjoy what is, give your input once and constructively or at least respectfully, if it doesn't change in a way you can abide, move on.

@tinuviel I can kinda see that--but that still doesn't super work, at least for me. I think it's an attitude that can get one into big trouble, and needlessly hurt people. I do see that a LOT of people, myself included, tend to operate on some level of nostalgia when it comes to things that annoy us/encourage resentment in us. But I see that much more of a "check yourself before you wreck yourself" moment, rather than "OMG this suck because you people have changed things too much.", even though it's a lot easier to do the latter than the former.

I'm not sure that I would want to encourage mu players to treat of the staff of the games they run with the same entitlement that some people have towards the big gaming corporations about games they bought.

If for no other reason that by and large those corporations just do not care institutionally, they're easy to scream at, villify, ect. Most gamerunners do indeed care, can be easily frustrated and demoralized by entitled people screaming at them that the game isn't what "I (didn't) pay for".

The sheer level of extreme ugliness that I have seen directed at game runners is not something that I would want to encourage. Even remotely. At all.

it's okay to express frustrations, I mean sometimes that input is taken seriously and considered and that can help the game as a whole. I think we already have a big issue with people being unable to separate "what I want" from "good for all."

@arkandel I agree. And honestly reevaluating that has helped me get a lot more patience and personal fun back.

I love pretty much all forms of music, but what I crank up in the car when I need to sing along to it is country western and old choral hymns.

• I love Korean jjimjilbang and Russian banyas. While I detest hot weather and whine if the weather involves temperatures above 80 degrees, I will happily roast myself in a sauna while wearing a wool cap (it allows you to stay in longer at hotter temps, because it protects your hair from getting super hot), then jump in over my head to the icy cold pool, then work my way through all the various temperature baths before baking myself in the sauna, and repeating that cycle for a few hours. Heavenly, and makes your skin look great.

• I developed radar nose with my first pregnancy and it's never gone away. This is a bad thing when you have a bunch of young adolescent boys but eventually that part gets easier. So I can smell/identify smells even at very small volume with a high degree of accuracy. It's a cool trick at wine tasting parties because I hate the taste of wine but if you give me what I'm supposed to be smelling for I can do better most of the time than the people who actually taste it.

• I don't like alcohol, unless it doesn't taste like it. I didn't take a drink until I was 21, took one sip of a strawberry daquiri and then promptly gave it to a friend so I could order a non-alcoholic one. I get headaches from tannins and most liquor makes me flush. I love making cocktails though, and can usually enjoy a glass of mead, cider, or a very watered down cocktail.

• I don't get high from marijuana. I sort of smoked my first joint at 40. I've tried edibles, drinkables, tinctures, blah blah blah, so I can track the potency. One time I ingested about triple the recommended dose and all that happened is that I went to sleep like 2 hours later. I'm a little disappointed to be honest. Suggestions, anyone? On the plus side I never feel paranoid or sick either which is good from what I understand.

• I love animals! I double majored in college in Family and Child Development and Animal Science and once thought I'd be a large animal vet. I grew up riding horses (just riding, nothing fancy like showing or rodeo). I've spent many hours on barn watch for calves and lambs and pigs. I've actually rounded up cattle on horseback! Cattle are my favorite. If I didn't know that my husband would kill me, I would get a couple of small breed cattle just for pets. I fucking hate sheep except for lambs. I also think turkeys are freaks. I have been bitten and/or kicked by just about every kind of animal except for exotic cats and large reptiles. I've received the rabies vaccine series like 3 times.

• Aside from MUSHing, my only other long time hobby is survivalism/disaster prep. I used to help moderate a huge forum for non-white-supremacist/fundamentalist religious preppers. At all times we have at least a 3 month supply of food (we have a well which can be used without power though it's a pain in the ass, so we have a smaller quantity of water on hand too), seeds to grow greens and other things in a pinch, sanitation supplies, pretty much everything but a generator. I also have bug out bags for every single person prepped for our family, as well as a car kit in each care for the winter. (during the summer since I have a preschooler i have enough snacks plus half-eaten snacks in the cars to feed half an army).

Ohhh I just think @faraday is the bee's knees and I am totally in love with Ares.

@three-eyed-crow I could kinda see maybe an agreement you sign in order to make a bit (kind of like how in the olden days there was often a behavior agreement or disclaimer you had to type "I agree" to?).

But. For this purpose, you'd also need people to give you their legal names, probably at least the country of residency and inform them that you intended to publish their work, credited, in some kind of anthology like thing that you intended to put up on a third party selling/publishing site.

I am pretty sure that would turn a LOT of at least the old fogies off, and maybe scare off people who don't write on their own or don't plan to and probably wouldn't care if they thought about it, but that's a LOT of info to give out/sign away.

I could see a generic mush as perhaps an innovative way for collaborative storytelling for the purpose of publication. (For all I know collaborators have done this for years now, or something like it.)

However, I would never play on a mush that would take my writing pieces and then publish them to make money for someone else and that would give the rights away in that format to a third party publisher. I am not knocking people that would. However, because I do write for my own pleasure, and sometimes elements of what I'm writing influence my RP or vice versa, I would not want the challenges/entanglements should I ever get up the guts to seek to publish any of my personal work in the future.

But as for just saving/making a log printable for personal pleasure/enjoyment later, that's a good question. I have noticed that even when I doc RP with someone (which is pretty frequent when I'm playing, because of my schedule/time committments/inability to sit for as long as I used to be able to) we tend to stick to mush formatting rather than indentations and stuff. Maybe as an experiment I'll have to see if I can find an old log that survived my laptop purge and reformat it to something more like conventional formatting. I suspect it would be a little weird, and not flow as well as a piece written and then polished to seem like it was coming from one voice.

My gut says that it would seem very off to me, and they are just different things.

Also I think that answer will be different for everyone. I am an extroverted social people-loving person. That is always going to be something I gravitate towards, making new friends and acquaintances all over the place. I do that in RL, online, where ever. I like having a hobby that allows me to pursue storytelling and make friends.

That is going to be fundamentally different from someone who doesnt like to connect with people or whose primary social outlet is mushing. None of it is wrong and from the outside it might look like everyone is doing/receiving the same things (building a character, pursuing their story, doing this with others), but what we get out of it and why is going to be individual for every musher.

Yes. My experience in mushing is that of constant meeting/weaving new people in. That is part of the appeal. I don't rp regularly with any of the mushers who are now RL family to me.

And I have had many instances of starting over/making new contacts.

What keeps me in: still the people. I have met tons of people IRL over the years. Many people have become dear friends regardless of where they live. 4 out of the 5 people on the planet that I would intrinsically trust with my children in an emergency or that I would allow to see me in a very vulnerable state are people I have met via gaming who have become chosen family (5 out of 6 if you count hubby, who I met on SR Seattle back in the day).

I also have grown to appreciate and adore collective storytelling, which is a very different beast than writing yourself. It is challenging and surprising and fun.

My all women gaming group at college was dispersing when everyone was graduating but me, and someone told me about it. I tried it and fell in love, I love to write, it was more immersive, it beat the meat market effect of going to the RPG guild on campus or gaming store groups (keep in mind late teens/early 20s youngMietze was a curvaceous size 4, petite, waist length Auburn hair and part asian) where misogynistic randos liked to try their lacking social skills/boundaries on me.

Not that there are not creepers and asshats in mushing but I have personally found the vast majority of men in this hobby to be far more respectful, kind, socially intelligent, and sane than the "gamer culture" as a whole in the 90s/early 00s.

I have found/been found by relatives on my biological father's side of my heretofore unknown family tree. I have a half-brother. Since I do not want to risk destroying anyone's holidays I will send a letter after them (to bio father) with some info and to leave contact, if any, up to him. I do have reason to believe that it isn't unwelcome.

I snooped and looked at half-brother's webpage. My twins look so much like him it made me cry.

My adoptive family experience was significantly fucked up enough for me to be very careful to have absolutely no expectations (except for the worst).

But still. It's another piece of my past solved.

Personally I think a small bump in xp for the individual running something is enough. That is equally rewarding to everyone. Social pcs snd knowledge PCs and combat pcs can then use that to whatever purpose they want (maybe for their specialty. Maybe not and they just go for another dot in x party-related skill that they wouldn't have felt right about getting otherwise (OH NO THEY ARENT MIN/MAXING!!!!!!!). Or whatever they want.

I would say that events are largely for social /players/. I love people. I have lots of crazy/fun/stupid/near ideas for events. I like to rp with family and groups. I-player like that. So out of all the folks in one of my families I am the most likely to drag people with me to events, the most likely to organize a small get together, the most likely to proactively drop lines to others to invite them to rp about totally unrelated to stats/prestige/systems stuff...even though I am the least socially statted person of that family. Because I like doing those things.

@kanye-qwest why assume that only social characters run events for their houses. Lots of "combat" pcs do because their players like doing that or because no one else will step up.

Maybe we should get rid of the leaderboards since they seem to be used as a reason to be shitty to other people and to get resentful or think that if you don't have 6s in everything that you are useless

Or out of fear that they are not doing it right because their skills are "too low/not good enough."

People are probably using modeling less not because of numbers but because of the insanely ugly nasty ooc behavior towards those players who were thought to be using it "too much" in "ways I can't/dont like.: