Best posts made by Pandora

Cyberrun is flagged and filtered, Net Nanny approved. It also has CyberRun is an adult game, you must be at least 18 years of age to play. on its home page, something most MUs do not, likely to avoid looking like a den of sin and depravity. Joke is - all MUs that haven't outright banned TS are dens of sin, depravity, and mudsex with strangers - any of whom might be children.

On Cyberrun, all of a character's channel & private communication in-game, IC & OOC, is stored in a window that cannot be closed separately from the main game window and it has a pretty sizable buffer, so any parent interested in what their wayward child is doing online cannot be stymied by their child quickly closing and re-opening the game, a la most of the telnet clients that play host to MUs.

There is something to be said for transparency in the bid to keep actual children safe. A conversation about what steps any game, from Cyberrun to My Little Ponies MU to games in the process of opening, can take to further ensure that parents and internet porn-blockers can stay one step ahead of children wandering into adult play spaces would be much more mildly constructive.

@nyctophiliac Your SIL is a cow, hang in there.

Segway =/= segue.

Took my mini-me to Edventure for their Halloween Hoopla event (because trick or treating door-to-door in a state that voted for Trump is dangerous) and when we got home she said 'On a scale of one to ten this night was THE BEST NIGHT EVER!!' and so I win everything. Life is good.

I want to know what public, 3+ people in the room emote was so 'creepy' in-character that it warrants OOC discussion. Like, copy-paste an example please, somebody.

IC creeping is usually just terrible flirting, something MOST roleplayers not only suck at, but are also perfectly aware that they suck at it.

Imagine playing a 'suave and charming' dude and you're sweating bullets trying to pull this off and you have a sinking suspicion you're failing badly because this chick won't even let you buy her a drink and drinks don't even codely cost anything because this is a MUSH-

And then you find out out that not only was your RP kinda bad today but now you've been branded a creep because some third-party put it into your RP-partner's head that not only was the flirting bad but it was also worthy of OOC checking in so omggg this player must have a history of abusive behavior omg am I being victimized? Thank you so much for the warning, I will now tell EVERYONE!-

Pump the brakes.

Portraying characters outside of our comfort zones can be challenging enough without this type of overkill. Please save the flashing lights for actual emergencies; this isn't CNN, everything isn't a Breaking News Pandemic.

With a fairly regular frequency, it comes up that people either don't know their boundaries until they've been crossed, have trouble standing up for themselves, are stressed out by the idea of initiating push-back against uncomfortable IC interactions, and so on.

Within the MUSH community, there don't really seem to be many (if any) concrete steps taken to address this matter, so I was wondering what suggestions people might have for ways that game-creators could facilitate this in a concrete, effective way.

One thought I had was borrowing the concept of safe words from the BDSM community. In a scene, someone could use the command RED to signify that whatever's just happened or in the process of happening has affected them negatively (I don't like to use the word triggered, it has distinctly mocking connotations when used about other people & this isn't that kind of thread) and they'd like it to stop immediately.

There shouldn't be any requirement for them to specify why they want it to stop, that would just be it. This has to stop, now. The onus would then be on the other person to stop & if necessary seek arbitration from staff.

So for example, if someone has been harassing people in the streets on a game and gets arrested and they use the RED command because they don't like being arrested, the roleplay stops and the arresting character contacts staff to explain what's happened and now the onus is on staff to deal with someone being problematic & come up with some negotiated solution, rather than the arresting player having to deal with the headache of someone being OOCly uncooperative regarding their ICA=ICC.

And as another example, if someone has responded positively to another character's flirtatious advances and everything's been fine up to a point but suddenly they're no longer comfortable with the direction/speed of things, they can use the RED command and the scene stops. Again, no explanation or awkwardly apologetic conversation needed, it just stops. And should the other person object (I can't think of a situation where objecting here wouldn't be patently gross but okay, come at me) the onus would be on them to quite literally contact and explain to staff why the scene in question needs to have some third-party negotiated ending.

YELLOW would be 'Can we negotiate?' This puts the brakes on the scene and opens up an OOC dialogue where boundaries, if spotted in the near distance, can be discussed. Even something as simple as 'Hi, I'm fine with being disciplined for the mistake but it feels really bad when your character piles on the insults, could we dial that back a bit?' or 'Hey, things are getting more serious at this point, I'm open to the idea of them hooking up but could we FTB once clothes start coming off?' YELLOW means the person isn't OOCly trying to avoid the IC situation, but instead trying to work with you to keep the IC as comfortable for all parties as possible.

I think YELLOW would be especially important because oftentimes one of the reasons people don't speak up is because they think the other person will assume they are overreacting or just trying to get out of ICA=ICC if they object to anything. We are all adults here, granted with varying levels of empathy, but I think it'd be hard for anyone that isn't a world-class jackass to see a clear-cut indicator that 'This person is struggling with this scene in some way' and not want to help fix it if possible. And maybe there's an impasse, or what they're requesting isn't IC for you - well now you both know, and can end the scene or seek third-party mediation and handle it like adults that tried.

And last but not least, GREEN. Many of us have been in the position of being the aggressor or antagonist in a scene and while it seems like everyone is engaged and consenting on an OOC level, you don't really what people are thinking and it'd be nice to know if they're okay but asking oocly 'Are you still enjoying this?' can be taken as fucking creepy as hell. GREEN simply means 'I'm okay with what's happening here.' Anyone can use it, it means nothing needs to stop or slow down, everything is fine, and everyone can continue without fear that they're bothering anyone on an OOC level.

So, that's my suggestion - any thoughts? Or perhaps you've thought of or heard of similar game-side efforts to facilitate standardized OOC consent for people who struggle to initiate with others?

@Apos Preach. Problem players love to create dependency in new players, with their 'Let me show you the ropes' spiel; it's a form of grooming for sure. Problem is, many perfectly well-meaning players have the same behavior and we encourage this behavior in newbie-helpers, so it's hard for new players to tell who is being welcoming and friendly, and who is seeking to use and abuse them.

The fantasy: I'll be able to look past all the things I don't like about people's characters and enjoy playing with them anyway.
The reality: I can't pretend to like characters for more than a few weeks/months before my inner voice is like 'fuck this place, let's go play video games instead.'

The fantasy: That fun and fairness are equal-opportunity & I'll have a great time anonymously.
The reality: I get more/better RP opportunities when I play games where I know people & I feel pigeonholed into certain roles when I play with people I know.

The fantasy: I can fake it til it's fun.
The reality: It hurts to try sometimes.

Not reading descs carefully on Shang before agreeing to a scene is a good way to scar yourself for life.

RP that's good not for how long it lasted but how deeply it resonated. I'm such a sucker for the little things. /nostalgia

Please don't do to communities of color what the MU* community has done to lesbians.

If you care about diversity in gaming, reach out to your black friends, your gay friends, your trans friends, your disabled friends, and let them know what they're missing out on in this hobby.

There's no game on which not a single player thinks something is unfair, or hasn't had a single player abuse information. That has nothing to do with code and everything to do with human beings being on the internet.

My experience with rosters is that the less-crunchy characters, or characters that are specifically not beautiful, or powerful, or special - they don't leave the roster. Every now and then you'll get one of them taken by someone new - who then laments not taking that uber-looking guy that had been available, back when they had the chance.

If the goal is to give people a feel for the RP of a place without having to CG a character, I don't know how useful throwaway characters would be. Current active chars (not players, mind you, but their characters) wouldn't have some specific reason to draw them in. What impression do you want to give new people?

A suggestion I might have is to gild these wilting flowers. If someone takes Footsoldier #356 off the roster, have it notify people in the military that So-n-So's reenlistment date is upcoming, and they should all be making their best effort to keep him within the ranks. It's a reason to RP. If someone takes Petty Criminal #837 off the roster, have it notify other criminals that he recently got out of jail and that they should find out if he snitched on someone/throw him a welcome home party, etc. Basically little plot hooks that would make sense even if they happened every single day.

TLDR; there's nothing quite like a character with no plot hooks or ties to other characters or organizations to cause a new player to never log back in again. There are obviously going to be exceptions to this rule because people are individuals, but by and large, you want to draw new people in, not set them adrift on an open sea and hope they wash up on the shore of an uncharted island of exciting RP.

Does anyone here remember Atonement? Not Grungetown, fuck that noise. But the very beginning. Alpha.

Where's the original sci-fi? Is anyone working on anything like this? I miss being excited in a game, I miss change and danger and progress, things we are sorely lacking as we make ever more vampires and...yeah just more and more vampires. Someone please have mercy and/or originality out here.

@GreenFlashlight said in Le Deuxieme Etat:

@Pandora said in Le Deuxieme Etat:

Someone told me once that a black girl couldn't be a fairy because there's no fairies in Africa (not a racist person, just a stickler for historical plausibility)

It seems to me a stickler for historical plausibility would say no one could be a fairy because there's no fairies anywhere.

Well, I did say historical plausibility, not historical accuracy. But yeah, I do kind of feel it would have been nicer to just let it be, there were no rules against it, this was just someone I respect's opinion. I am a decade+ older now & respect means a lot less to me, I do what I want and make black characters everywhere, because fuck it.

@ganymede
Well first and foremost I want to say I hope they're wrong and that she has not, in fact, developed ovarian cancer. That said, even a preemptive diagnosis like that is terrible and I'm sorry the two of you are having to go through that. I hate when cancer survivors are called fighters (as if the ones that didn't make it somehow weren't) but she is a survivor & here's high hopes for that to remain true for long into the future.

I miss the days before wikis were a standardized feature. Back when you remembered a character's birthday or favorite color or the name of their pet because they told it to you once and you remembered, not because you checked Facebook(the wiki). I miss when people put more effort into their descriptions because they didn't have a picture to fall back on. I miss when you had to talk to people IC to learn their background story.

I don't like character wiki pages at all, but it doesn't seem like they're going anywhere, they're just too convenient, which is most unfortunate.

These people, in games and in real life, annoy the hell out of me. Ever had trouble separating the genuinely nice people from the suspiciously creepy posers? Read on.

The Stealthiest Predator (aka, the manipulative 'nice guy/girl' assholes you know are suspicious but can't actually pin a real crime on)

@rdc said in Requiem 2e Bloodlines:

I'm super into custom local flavor. That said, unfortunately, most of the local stuff I wrote for NOLA 1 didn't get read by...basically anyone. We had precisely one person not on staff significantly interact with one Mystery Cult, and that was about it. Benefit vs. cost doesn't seem to work out when you try to alter what people expect too radically.

Who do you find at-fault for this, is my question. If a game design element is not being interacted with by your player base, couldn't that mean it wasn't presented in an engaging way? Oftentimes, people shy away from something new not because it isn't interesting, but because they aren't sure of how to go about getting involved, and fear misstepping or making themselves look stupid by going about something the wrong way.

I too write a lot of smutty fanfiction. A03 is a great site for thirsty readers to provide the best feedback and encouragement for you to keep updating your stories. Not that any number of comments and requests can stop me from being lazy when I really put my mind to it.