Best posts made by Quinn

Branching out and finding new, fun, really cool people to RP with.

The Book of Three series by Lloyd Alexander. The ending book, The High King, is still one of my favorite books ever.

Thank you, lone person that sent us an email after hours to say that they were grateful for everything my team is doing. It's been a rough fucking week, we'll be working all weekend, and we really needed that.

As a staffer, I also tried to cater plots towards character sheets for the people who showed up. Did someone take a bunch of nonsense points in diving and underwater basket weaving? Then by god, they're going to need to roll those to trap an underwater somethingorother in a basket made from kelp! I loved rewarding people who spent points on character stuff that they probably thought they'd never use.

"Per @NPR Justice Ginsburg’s deathbed statement is this: “My most fervent wish is that I will not be replaced until a new President is installed.”"

If it is a legitimately known creeper I will page the person. This has only come up once with a new female PC and I did it after the scene had ended to be like hey, you do what you want, but just so you know this guy is pretty notorious for going after someone hard IC then asking them for nudes OOC and I don't want it to scare you off the game if it happens.

She thanked me and said that yeah, he'd already paged her some really weird things and it was good to know that she should just avoid him. I think I then said something like he'd already been reported to staff at least once so PLEASE to report it if things got too inappropriate for her.

He eventually got banned for being a creeper.

I actually really like games that speed up time because then it makes more sense when two PCs meet one day and get married after knowing each other only a week when it's like a month in game time!

The Dark Is Rising by Susan Cooper. I memorized the whole poem for a 6th grade reading project and I still remember it.

And a Swiftly Tilting Planet was my favorite L'Engle book. I've got the poem from that one memorized as well.

All the graduation ceremonies--including @TheOnceler who graduated yesterday! There's just something so wonderful about seeing all the proud families and the beaming graduates around at this time of year. It's incredibly fulfilling to be able to recognize the names of people called across the stage every year--your teachers remember you! And we're so happy to see you reaching these milestones.

I can't even complain about the extra traffic this time of year causes cause everyone is just so happy!

I think the most important thing has to come from staff:

Give people things to do.

This doesn't mean 24-7 staff has to be running something, but they need to be giving players some way to engage with the theme and their fellow players. I'm a big fan of Monster of the Week type deals, which can be one offs or things people can follow up on. Doesn't always have to be combat, could just be a big social thing. A dance, a festival, something to bring people together and give people a reason to be somewhere and talk to other people. Big A+s from me if it is involving EVERYONE and not just the same five people over and over again. If I think staff is trying to get everyone involved, I will go out of my way to try to give players who can't figure out an excuse to get in a way to do so. I'm a huge legworker. I LOVE investigating the shit out of things and then passing the information along to other people.

That said, I think there's an ebb and flow to this kind of thing. Sometimes you get a group of people that wants to proactively chase down leads. Sometimes the current crew is the stand on the corner and wait for a monster to drop no matter how long it takes sort.

Giving people something to do empowers players to entertain themselves and one another. Bar RP, okay, I can do it. Bar RP where we're all talking about That Thing That Happened and Making Plans? Way better! Even better? Allowing players to run PrPs. One off PrPs or PrPs tied to things that are happening in a major plot. Maybe zombies are attacking the city! Not every scene has to be a big staff plot. Let someone run someone's Aunt Edna coming back to kill her nephew for bad mouthing her fruit cake recipe!

The saddest things are games with great themes that players can't ever interact with. I'll RP with anyone and try to drag people onto the grid, but being proactive doesn't matter if there's nothing to do.

Liked for great name choices.

Is it a picture of Fonzie jumping a dragon?

I think that's when you have to know the kind of group you've got, which can be hard to tell if it's the first time they're all together. Some people will NEVER legwork a thing. Some people need someone to actively say, "If people want to follow up on this there will be other things coming from this plot for people that put in research requests!" And some people will legwork that plot that had no followup because it was just helping an old lady cross the street, but hey, when that happened I'd throw something together because A+ for effort even if it was misplaced!

I'm Sabella and a SECRET ALT. Probably.

I've been the only woman in my department for a long time. That's now starting to change, but when I first started I didn't even clue in to the fact I was the only woman until a new hire asked me if being the only woman in IT was tough. I'd honestly never thought about it before. Then I moved into a position where my boss sexually and just straight up harassed me (and others) for years and was promoted out of trouble thee times!

Your best intentions here aren't helpful. You're already labeling this theoretical woman the "other" when you should probably just be more focused on building a team that's not full of assholes that would make someone who wasn't a techbro (and there are lots more designations in there than just 'omg woman') feel out of place. You know what makes a woman feel comfortable? Getting a cool job and not having to put up with bullshit day in and day out about lol a girl thinks she knows computers or having people second guess what she's doing just because she's lacking a penis or having people ask if she feels comfortable surrounded by men. We aren't these sensitive glass things that need a workplace to take great care with us. You want to build a great team? Someone else said it already but hire all women!

If someone in an interview ever asked me if I felt comfortable being the only woman in a department I'd nope out of there so fast because they'd be letting me know they expect it to be a problem.

@ThatGuyThere How do you do that though without having a staff member always be around in every room any RP is happening in just in case someone wants to RP researching something related to a plot? Seriously asking.

I wouldn't mind doing library RP looking for things, but if I also put in a +request, I could then actually get something without the staffer having to be there in the scene and could just RP it with the other PCs around. It doesn't even have to be long "X PC is going to be looking in the library for things related to X in the plot scene the other night."

@Aria Make sure that you know what kind of breast tissue you have. I had no idea this was a thing, but they basically grade it and if you have dense or extremely dense tissue, just getting a mammogram doesn't cut it (cancer shows up as white, but if you have dense tissue it ALL shows up as white). You need to do that AND have an ultrasound OR there's some 3D scanning they can do. In my state they are required to let you know so that you can get the right kinds of tests. I just had my first one following a lump scare (which turned out to be nothing) but was informed that since I have extremely dense breast tissue that in the future I need to also make sure my doctor is either scheduling an ultrasound to go with it or an alternative.

1. Your real world identity - meaning anything past your first name, including your general geographical location (city, State, etc). Please remember if you e-mail or share documents using your e-mail accounts those often include that name!

INCREDIBLY. And I was not always very good at this. It is very, very easy to forget that the people you might talk to every day on the internet are strangers. That what you post on the internet is forever and that shit can come back to haunt you. I was on a forum for a decade or more that was targeted by gamergators. They basically came after mainly women posters who had "ideas" about video games/gaming. This lead to people's families being threatened, people seriously doxxing them to find their home address and telephone number, and a few people had some of their posts where they talked about work sent to their workplaces.

Since that's happened I try very hard not to give out very identifiable information online just in general. @Ghost raised some excellent, excellent points that your average person just does not think about when it comes to how much of your information is getting out there. If you are not watching yourself, you should. I've been around since usenet/IRC days when people would joke about axe murderers, but I still went to plenty of meetups, traded pictures with people, gave my phone number out, and way, way over shared. And we were all super assholes back then, but no one I knew (or knew of) would go to the extent of trying to hunt down someone's real life home address to send them threats or trying to get them fired because they had an opinion they disagreed with.

2. This is a subset of the above but I wanted to isolate it... what about your gender, family status, religion, etc? That is, stuff about your social status.

It fucking sucks to be a woman on the internet. When I am going somewhere new, I pick a handle that would be hard to pin a gender on. Most people will automatically assume you're a guy if you're talking about video games or gaming. You don't get the rape threats until they figure out you're a woman.

There are a select few MUSHers that I am Facebook friends with, some of which I've "known" since I was 15. They're good people. I'd say the vast majority of MUSHers are nice people. But one crazy fucker that has you talking to your boss about potential RL blowback because you thought there were issues with representation in something can really sober you up quickly to the realities of how dangerous sharing online can be. And it can be really, really hard not to share. I'm a very social person. I want to talk about how cute my kids are. I want everyone to know how great they are!

But see how easy that is? Okay, now you know I'm a parent. I've got more than one kid. So, if you wanted to start stalking me and trying to figure out who I was, that's a nice clue to have.

3. Your 'physical' digintal footprint; for example sharing pictures of yourself, but also even being on a voicechat with others; do you only do it with trusted few or go on general channels?

I don't do it anymore, but I DID do it a lot back when I was a teenager/early 20s. Now my shit is locked down and I do not share stuff like that with strangers i.e. anyone not on my very short Facebook friends list.

4. Your e-mail address or other online traces of your identity outside of gaming.

I have so many damn email accounts, all for different aspects of my life.

5. Your identity on games - are you at all concerned about people figuring out your alts, or who you play on other games, including non-MU*? What about the room you are in, or who you are RPing with?

I took a seven year break from MUSHing so I'd be pretty impressed if anyone could figure out who I was. I often got lumped into whatever nonsense @TheOnceler was up to, regardless of whether or not I was aware/contributing to it, so that's the only thing I even slightly worry about. It is very frustrating to always be treated like an extension of your partner/spouse/roommate/whatever, but it happens just about everywhere on the internet when a pair of people are posting/playing. And MUSHers have looooong memories. So I don't advertise that I'm me where I'm playing or talk about past games until I've established myself. And then the conversation always goes like this:

Me: I'm so and so and played here.
Them: Ooooh I remember you! I hated you then!
Me: Yeah, we all took things very seriously back then didn't we.
Them: Haha, yeah, god we were stupid kids. Want to RP?

Fin.

Otherwise, I don't care if people know who my alts are, where I am, or who I'm RPing with. If I'm on a game, I'll RP with anyone and everyone from the guy people think is problematic to the most popular kid in the room.

tldr: If you are not being careful online YOU SHOULD BE CAREFUL! If you are being careful, BE MORE CAREFUL! It is god damn terrifying to have someone you don't know and don't even remember having a conversation with sending you a personal email that's not associated with a forum and start saying how they could really fuck things up for you if X learned about this post you made ten years ago.

Supernatural.

I'm a cisgender, straight woman and I find playing a guy pretty tricky unless I'm just going all out frat-boy stereotype as a one off NPC. I just can't get that into it and feel more comfortable playing women. I'm not sitting there constantly like "is this how guys scratch their balls? How much ball scratching should one pose have?" when I'm playing a woman. I know how many times I scratch my balls a day, people.

Like some others have said, while I like romantic roleplay usually the sexytimes isn't what I'm after, I like the lead-up and then what happens next and in all cases that's been my lady PC with a guy PC. I'm just not interested in chasing the ladies. Sorry, ladies.

The only people that have ever made me feel uncomfortable about any of that in the hobby have been male players playing lesbian/bisexual lady PCs that come after mine. I've only ever felt like someone was being really pushy about things like that a handful of times in the entire hobby, but in all those times that was the scenario and I noped right out of there quickly. Everything from "The PC is close minded if they don't go for this" to "You as a player are close minded if you don't go for this" and it's like you do you, but I am just not interested and neither is my PC. Sorry! Then they never RP with me again and that's fine by me.

The biggest squicky thing I ran into on a game about this was a great male PC that was playing being mostly in the closet (like a well-kept secret from NPCs although PCs knew), who fell into roleplaying with a female PC (and player) who was extremely clingy both IC and OOC. They set up this storyline that HE OOCly thought was very tragic, which was kind of his jam (she was in love with him, he was not in love with her but felt obligated to care for her and she was manipulating him into sex he didn't care for, woe etc.) but that SHE OOCly thought was the height of romance because her magical vagina was going to make him straight and it was a love story for the ages!

Obviously neither of them or us at home knew this huge disconnect existed at first, but it came out dramatically one day when someone made an offhand comment about what a sad story it was for the male PC. Huge drama. Huge revelations that the female player thought OOCly all a gay man needed was the right vagina. Epic drama/ragequit when everyone else smacked her down hard.