Posts made by Pandora

Staff being able to spy on players is common, players being aware of it may be less common, and staffers without any coding experience being aware that they could potentially have this capability may also be less common.

There are often good reasons to spy on players, and this often considered a breach of privacy.

Privacy is a debatable commodity on a MU* when you can take your private OOC conversations to Discord, much the same way tabletop RPers can take their private OOC conversations into another room that the GM is not responsible for.

2020 is a very different time than 1997, and people appreciatedemand transparency, often to the extent that it is detrimental to a game's setting, theme, and ambiance if staff allows their vision to be trampled over for the sake of said transparency. (Most do.)

I'd advise that you put the policy back in place, else this thread WILL come back to bite you in the ass at some point, and the accusation WILL be that you obfuscated your spying. Not worth it.

Policy + Clarification, and an outline of what complaint procedures are, including whether or not people are issued warnings that they're being observed, how long the observation period will be for, and so on. If someone is worthy of being spied on 24/7 forever, just ban them. You're making too much work for yourself, especially for a manual labor-intensive code-lite game.

@Rowan said in Firefly - Still Flyin':

At least they're not using 'observer objects' like Firan, which would be on you 24/7 logging everything both IC and OOC.

My stomach still hurts thinking about this & how blatantly it was abused.

I'd be all for OOC rooms being silent rooms and people just using the public channel for what they usually use the OOC room for. I find that OOC rooms tend to be inordinately cliquish, even inadvertently, with the Usual Suspects and their inside jokes you wouldn't get if you weren't also perpetually-logged-on-and-yet-never-roleplaying, like them.

@Ghost said in RL things I love:

@Pandora said in RL things I love:

@Ghost 1. You're a terrible person.

2. I'm literally watching this with my bestie right this second.

Yeah we're about 9 episodes in. It's not bad, although I wish it were more grim dark. I think Somerhalder might be underrated.

I think his eyebrows need to win an award for best supporting character, they are so expressive.

@Ghost 1. You're a terrible person.

2. I'm literally watching this with my bestie right this second.

@Tinuviel said in Model Policies?:

@Pandora said in Model Policies?:

@Tinuviel said in Model Policies?:

@Pandora Heck, I'd say "If anyone asks you to take it off channel, don't argue about it."

I'm cringing at the idea of most of you motherfuckers being authorized to tell anyone to shut up and that being enforced, real talk.

That's why I advocate for a separate channel for such conversations.

That's an idea. I don't know of many games that have or have needed such a thing, but I won't knock it. I don't know that advocating for a separate channel for innocuous conversations that might cause someone to feel argumentative really has a whole lot to do with 'short, clear, reasonable MUSH policies' though, again.

@Tinuviel said in Model Policies?:

@Pandora Heck, I'd say "If anyone asks you to take it off channel, don't argue about it."

I'm cringing at the idea of most of you motherfuckers being authorized to tell anyone to shut up and that being enforced, real talk.

@Tinuviel said in Model Policies?:

@Pandora said in Model Policies?:

I don't think a policy that tries to police the nuance of a discussion to the degree of ascertaining whether or not a conversation is based on something that could or could not eventually possibly lead to an argument falls under OP's umbrella of short, clear, reasonable MUSH policies but that's my unsolicited opinion.

True. But I think that deciding on what kind of conversations you're going to allow, for lack of a better term, is an important discussion to have when forming policies. Because you're going to have to police conversations, not right away necessarily but eventually.

Policy: Keep it civil, people, and if staff says to take your conversation off the channel, don't argue about it. Just be cool. Like the Fonz.

I don't think a policy that tries to police the nuance of a discussion to the degree of ascertaining whether or not a conversation is based on something that could or could not eventually possibly lead to an argument falls under OP's umbrella of short, clear, reasonable MUSH policies but that's my unsolicited opinion.

@Tinuviel said in Model Policies?:

@Pandora said in Model Policies?:

I can't think of any time a rule like that has been needed, and I feel like having that in your policy will say more (negative) about you and your game than just leaving it out and having some sort of Be Cool policy instead.

Well sure, not "don't talk about this ever" but more like... keep such conversations on X channel, instead of the main one. It's a compromise between those that do want to talk about everything to do with 'heated' subjects and those that don't.

But I'm asking like, when and where has a policy like this ever been needed? If you're in some circumstance where something as spicy as someone's gender or orientation would be inappropriate reading material, ya prolly shouldn't be on public channel until you get home.

I can't think of any time a rule like that has been needed, and I feel like having that in your policy will say more (negative) about you and your game than just leaving it out and having some sort of Be Cool policy instead.

@BlondeBot said in Model Policies?:

I'd say limit what can or can't be said on channels is a good one. Keep the guidelines clear and the consequences consistent. For instance:

No social justice

GTFO. I'm not playing anywhere with a policy that says if someone is being a misogynistic toad on a channel & I decide to get froggy about it, someone else has the right to scoff and say SJW like that means I'm the one being unreasonable.

No sexuality/gender/orientation

Excuse me while I pull my eyebrows back down from my fucking hairline at this one. Did you just suggest a 'don't ask/don't tell' policy on a MUSH channel?

Where the fuck did you people come from, and please go back.

Sister-in-Law's son is 4 and my kid will be 10 in a few days, and SIL repeated, several times, as soon as we walked into her house, 'OH, MY SON DIDN'T WANT SIDNEY TO COME, HE SAID SHE THREW A TOY EGG AT HIM LAST TIME' & 'I WAS TELLING MY SON WE'RE GOING ON HOLIDAY WITH SIDNEY SOON AND HE DIDN'T WANT HER ALONG AS LAST TIME SHE THREW A TOY EGG AT HIM'.

Listen: I only do this shit to pretend to be a big happy family & my kid would definitely rather be at home on her laptop so could you please PIPE THE FUCK DOWN making a 9 year old feel unwanted in your fucking house? Look, he's trying to play with her already - shut the fuck up. If you don't like me, cool. Let's pretend like grown ups. Don't embarrass my kid, I fucking hit people.

Edited to add: Happy fucking holidays. Have a drink for me if you too have in-laws you could do without.

If any of you own the D&D: Lords of Waterdeep board game on Steam & want to play, hit me up.

@Ghost I feel where you're coming from, but let's allow the heroes to focus on actual children being harmed rather than a wild goose chase for consenting adults writing distasteful smut that does not harm actual children. Priorities are important.

You will rarely get a workable answer to 'What should I (X) on (Y) game?' from people who don't play the game, as they won't know the people and culture of that game. We all know that spheres in games deviate wildly from the write-up in the source books, based on what the most-active or most-influential players have set as the pace and tone of play.

@Kanye-Qwest said in Arx's Elevation Situation:

@Pandora god knows I'm not up to date but the issue used to be, a house can't reliably keep a holding that's like, in the middle of/surrounded by other peoples' lands. Adding an island would be one thing, but moving to an island while keeping a patch surrounded by House Grimdark lands wouldn't be feasible.

If House So-n-So is on the mainland and wants become a Great House and set up new vassal houses on an island somewhere, would that be possible if their old liege for whatever reason agreed to let them keep their original land?

I can imagine @Pax sobbing over a tear-stained digital map as I type this post & I apologize.

When you've got a common pokemon down to 1 HP but the motherfucker will NOT stay in a pokeball. What the fuck!

@Auspice said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:

I have nothing to add, but a mere upvote didn't show an appropriate level of solidarity.

@Roz said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:

Cheesecake is gross. Enjoy your LACK OF DOWNVOTES.