Best posts made by Roz

@reimesu said in GMs and Players:

@bear_necessities Isn't it? Roz is talking about banning innocent people in the name of the greater good.

Go on, you guys explain to me how going all nuclear option on innocent people is the right thing to do. I'm listening. Explain to me how mentally harming innocent people is a good thing.

That's a pretty big misrepresentation of what I've said. I could use that same sort of logic to say, "Explain to me how letting an abusive stalker remain on a game because you don't have 100% incontrovertible evidence of all their action is a good thing." But I don't think anyone is actually saying that. Just like I'm not saying it. But both sides of the argument end up potentially harming someone. That was my point. Both sides do harm when people get it wrong.

It feels like you've taken your situation, mashed it together with a really painful part of your life, and said, "Roz would have been one of the people causing my pain." And yet nowhere have I said that I am in favor of wielding staff power with absolutely no judgment. Your situation as described sounds awful, and I am sorry that you had to go through it. It also sounds fairly different from what I was speaking about. I think whisper campaigns are a really nasty beast, and the one you've described clearly wasn't handled well by the staff of the game you were on.

@faraday said in GMs and Players:

@roz said in GMs and Players:

any bad actor can easily avoid putting their efforts into places that can been directly reported on the games that are on Ares. If these are the only methods of evidence that are acceptable, you will be leaving countless openings for bad actors to exploit.

Channels, mails, pages, and scenes can all be reported in Ares, so I think you're pretty covered? If someone is aware of a gap in the reporting defense I'd love to know about it.

Apologies, I didn't mean gaps in Ares itself. I meant more that people will simply go off-game to pursue manipulation on platforms that are judged to be more easily faked or doctored so that any evidence that comes from it will just be doubted by a game's staff and deemed unactionable if they're only prepared to act on activity that occurs on the game proper.

Stephen Sondheim.

I'm really, really not okay with this one. I can't even begin to describe what he did for American theatre.

I really regret never having the opportunity to meet him back when I was still in the industry.

Wow, that is very nice of you to say those things about my game! We -- that is, me, @Tez, @saosmash, and a few others -- have been RPing and staffing together for a long time, and we also have players who tend to follow us to our new games that we've known for a long time as well, so we're really conscious of the fact that this can be intimidating for some new players for the exact reasons you described: the feeling of coming into a party that everyone already knows each other in.

I don't tend to run into this as much as a player, because I tend to only check out games where I already know people, and I'm just not as prone to feeling that kind of stress on games in general. I've run into it as a staffer, though. You're right that you didn't chat with us about it, but we definitely have had players actually bring issues to us.

Here's what I think staff's responsibility is: do their best to make a game that is inclusive and welcoming. My co-staffers and I consider it our staff responsibility to look for a good percentage of our RP publicly and openly to balance any planned RP with friends.

You're right that a lot of this is perception. Sometimes players feel left out because they get silence when asking for RP, and they remember that and not so much the fact that other players also get silence plenty of times. Like, whenever I have a day where it's just quiet and I ask for RP multiple times over the day and no one's around or interested, I always want to be like I'M RECORDING THIS FOR NEXT TIME SOMEONE TRIES TO SAY THEY'RE THE ONLY PLAYER THIS HAPPENS TO. Because that's never the case. We've also, like -- literally made spreadsheets recording what character combos are RPing the most, and players that might get accused of being the most insular are actually playing with the widest variety of characters. Or players are frustrated at not getting RP, yet they almost never ask anyone for RP.

There's a certain extent where this is really hard to fix with a player, just because so much of it is perception-based. I mean, like -- we could share raw numbers and try to prove their perception wrong, I guess? I think sometimes when players talk to us they probably just want to be heard for half an hour, and we've done that.

But here's the truth: sometimes a player's RP is just not as well-liked by the rest of the playerbase and others just aren't as interested in RPing with them. It sucks, but that's just a fact of the hobby. Some people are more fun than others. But as staff, I can't make someone RP with a player they don't want to RP with, nor should I. That isn't my responsibility. We shouldn't punish players for RPing with who they want to RP with.

Anyways, it's a tough problem.

@macha said in Health and Wealth and GrownUp Stuff:

Basically, a new management company bought our complex a few months ago. They've been kinda jerks about some stuff. They raised the rent without any actual warning or anything signed by us, but we let it go.

Uhhh. Why? If you have a lease, your rent is fixed for the length of the lease, unless there is somehow language in the lease allowing for this (which wouldn't make any sense). It's very likely that you're legally owed the difference in that rent. I'd definitely follow Pyre's advice above and see if you can find a legal advocacy org focused on tenants' rights, etc.

@Three-Eyed-Crow said:

I think the best way someone can remedy this if somebody feels like maybe this is happening to them is make an effort to RP ABOUT other people if you're in a scene, rather than themselves. Like, ask about somebody's IC job or how they feel about that thing that happened ICly or whatever. I feel like this also helps in the being inclusive thing. I don't mind people who pose less-than-perfectly, as long as they're engaging with me and not expecting it to be All About Them 100% of the time.

100% this. I always tell people that the best way to get attention is to give attention. It won't always work, because some players are pretty self-centered and don't really play off other characters well. But a good amount of players will note when others are playing about them or expressing interest in their character and will feel goodwill that tends to get returned. And the playerbase at large notices it in logs.

@Thenomain said:

The second is that all new players are introduced to the game. I want to mention the AetherMUX quiz and casual newbie channel again. They also had reccs read by other players, so everyone had a chance to see everyone saying good things about everyone else. The game did not just expect a positive atmosphere, it created one.

I am interested in learning more about this!

Spotify's featuring a David Bowie playlist, if anyone wants to jam.

Really the biggest thing I'm reacting to is the idea purported by @Shayd that somehow online behavior does really matter because it's "not real life." That is a load of bullshit. I don't really have any desire to argue the nuances of online versus real life identity, but I will stand strong on the idea that social behavior doesn't "count less" just because it's happening in a digital space.

It feels weird to put it in this thread, but going through my old gchat logs with my late brother and being reminded of what a brilliant, obnoxious butthead he was is kind of great. They keep making me laugh, especially the ones where he very briefly tried out a MU* I was staff on.

I'm active on Tumblr, though I don't RP there myself. There's a big RP community there, and I feel like a lot of them would thrive in a medium more conducive to RP. (Tumblr is kind of terrible at back and forth in general.) We have a game tumblr for Transformers: Lost & Found and advertise there, among other places. We've gotten several great people through there who were mostly familiar with Tumblr RP but were happy to learn MU*. It's definitely a potential source of players, but you have to make sure you have good resources and support for players new to the medium.

@ShelBeast said:

There are parts that, admittedly, seem completely the result of over-exaggeration and/or pure fabrication... I don't want to marginalize the message, because it's a valid one, but yeah... Too much scare tactic. Personally, I find it very, very difficult to believe that a 13 year old girl not only gets openly told by a shopkeeper "old enough to bleed, old enough to breed", but then that a whole cadre of cronies would start chanting it like a mantra. Not unless the store just openly says "Pedophile Comics and Games" on the window. There's simply too many people, of all genders, who are very sensitive/hostile to the very thought of sexually abusing minors. Plus, it just reeks of caricature, not character, if that makes sense.

I mean, ask most women the youngest they can remember being harassed by an adult man, and a lot of them will say younger than 14. The first time I can remember getting catcalled I was probably 12. I've heard from women who developed early who got it as young as like 10. This isn't the exception; it's the rule.

To be frank, for those of you saying you've never seen it happen, or that it doesn't happen in your particular circle: that's not actually important. Because

@Arkandel said:

I am not disputing things like that happen. But are you going to say reports of them not happening should be silenced? If nothing else that could indicate the scale of sexual harassment within a community - whether, in other words, such behavior is typical or isolated. If on the other hand some of us - especially of the female persuasion - have then it would be an indication of the opposite.

It's really, really not isolated. Like, I literally don't think I know a woman who hasn't experienced some sort of harassment based on her gender within the geek and gamer sphere, and as a female geek, I certainly know a lot of them.

@ShelBeast said:

I am really curious, though, like Arkandel, about the experience of females (or perceived females) and other minorities or traditionally marginalized groups in the online community. Has this kind of behavior been the norm for you on MU*s? Is it something you experience more RL when gaming and less online or more?

The vitriol is a lot, lot higher online. I mean, I don't go a week without getting harassed IRL, and I've been made to feel extremely uncomfortable, skeeved, gross, and at the worse highly unsafe.

No one's ever told me to go kill myself or called me a cunt in real life. It's happened online for expressing opinions men don't like. (I think the worst was daring to say I didn't really think Joss Whedon's stuff was as feminist as he likes to claim.)

I can say that what I've experienced on MU*s has been less direct and more along the lines of atmospheric sexism (hah hah, let's trade sexy pics back and forth and talk about boobs). But I've also spent most of the past decade running games with other women where we generally are going to tell people to knock it off if they do stuff like that. Because that's -- kind of what women do: try to build their own communities where they can feel safe.

@Kanye-Qwest said:

I can't even comprehend tumblr rp. Didn't they remove replies??

They use reblog chains. I don't think they ever used replies for RP.

@Coin said:

@HorrorHound said:

@ThatGuyThere said:

@HorrorHound said:

Just, uh, prepare for the psychologically challenged. M'kay?

We are mushers aren't we kind of used to the psychologically challenged?

Not even close, in comparison.

I'm not sure which you're implying is crazier, but either way, you're probably underestimating the level of whackadoo of the other.

For real. The idea that MU* players are so much saner than the ~crazy SJWs of Tumblr~ is laughable.

Cap was in fact created at a time when there were plenty of Americans still supporting the Nazis, before the US ever entered the war. They received death threats for his creation and the depictions of him attacking and defeating Hitler. For two Jews who lived in a country that was still refusing to intervene while their family overseas in Europe were literally being slaughtered, it was a huge rebellion.

Michael Chabon fictionalized the sentiment -- if not the exact story -- in The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, which is one of my favorite books.

It's really this history of Cap as a creation of the Jewish people to protest their own growing genocide that really has a lot of people pissed about this.

Bit of a necro, but: having a big upcoming plot on your game -- the all-hands-on-deck kind of plot -- and being so freaking excited about it and watching the whole game get so stoked for it.

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah

Much less heavy and not so much RL Anger as RL Nerves, but I work admin-side in the performing arts and am getting back on stage for a song for the first time in years (staff show for the cabaret space I work on, among other things) and aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah yeah I'm pretty nervous. I never got stage fright when I was actually acting regularly, but getting up as yourself without a script is a whole nother can of worms.

I grew up in a pretty Transformers-obsessed household (one of my brothers went through a period of time when he only responded to the name Optimus Prime), have seen the movie a bunch of times, have seen a good amount of the G1 series along with a few other series, read the current IDW comics, staff an IDW Transformers game. I was actually just trying to name G1 Autobots because a couple at a party I was at were talking about how they were at a trivia night where one of the questions was naming all 18 of the original season 1 Autobots. I don't know if I got up to 12. (I tried to get clarification if the Dinobots counted, because they weren't on the original crew and were created later in the season, but the couple was very unhelpful.) Sometimes names are hard, and sometimes they don't come to mind immediately even if you know the answer.

I do know that even if I didn't get up to 12, I can still wear a fucking Autobot or Decepticon shirt if I fucking want and I don't actually have to be able to name any of them.

If the idea of someone wearing a t-shirt with artwork of a show, band, comic, movie, whatever without being able to answer an unsolicited pop quiz about the product is so offensive to you that you are actually compelled to quiz them about their clothing, then you are the problem, not the person who put on a t-shirt because they liked the t-shirt. Logos aren't sacred. T-shirts don't require an exam.

Especially because women are the targets of this like one thousand times more than men are.

Maybe the girl with the Nirvana shirt loves the music but never bothered to memorize the band member names because that wasn't the important part to her, and maybe she was getting fed up at getting increasingly condescended to.

This probably looks like a somewhat explosive response, but I am like 200000% done with t-shirt quizzes and fandom gatekeepers. Someone wearing a shirt and possibly knowing nothing about the product does not actually affect your relationship with the product.

@Sunny said in RL Anger:

@Roz said in RL Anger:

My roommate was on disability for a while after their fibro diagnosis, and their birth mom -- who is kind of a mess and has historically been super awful and unreliable -- offered to pay three months of my roomie's rent to help them out. We just found out that the rent was never paid (and she never told my roommate)and our landlord is suddenly like, hey you owe us two and a half grand. My roommate never asked me to help pay it when they sat me down to tell me what had happened, or even implied anything, but they don't have emergency resources/family with money to help with things like this, and I do and also have savings, so I'm just -- paying it. I'll probably never see the full amount again, but it's still better than my roommate -- who is a kind person even if they are not as responsible as they should be -- taking out some awful predatory payday loan or something. (Someone stole their identity years ago and did a number on their credit, too.)

This on top of a whole mess of work stress and family death anniversary and I literally just broke down last night talking to them about this. I'm not even angry, I'm just exhausted.

Upvoting not because of the situation (I am so sorry, man) but because you're a really, really, really good person. Thank you for doing this for your roomie. As someone who has been utterly hammered a number of times through my own stupidity combined with some fairly unfortunate events...thank you. It's people like you that make the world a livable place.

That's very kind of you to say. I feel pretty conscious of the fact that I've definitely been afforded some very distinct advantages in my life. When I got into my own money-related issue last year due to a combination of issues -- the kind of thing where other parties were being incompetent but I should have triple-checked -- I was able to call my family for help. I know there are a lot of people who don't have options like that when they get in trouble (including my roommate). I'm not saying that this was a totally easy sum of money that I won't think about, but I can afford to do it.

This game is a huge change for me in terms of setup but it's fun so far and the staff has all been super friendly. I'm having fun!

@Insomnia said in Pokemon Go:

Hell, people have sued because coffee was too hot.

You might want to read the facts of that case before you bring it up as an example of a meritless lawsuit. It's really not what people expect.

It's true that it doesn't feel terribly constructive when this thread starts clearly along the lines of "We've accepted that we're having recurring issues with X that is bothering players, how do people think the best way to navigate X is" and people respond and there's a lot of "Okay but just to be clear, I'm not really doing X" replies of varying levels of defensiveness. (Some fairly light, I will certainly give you that.)

I understand that it's not the most pleasant to be told you have a recurring problem in your staffing style, but it doesn't really help when it feels like you have to slip in justifications even as you're saying, "Yeah you're probably right." It's like, "Yeah you're probably right, BUT this thing I was doing wasn't so bad because..." It's not that you need to sit down and take abuse if people were to fling it out, but between this thread and the 100 thread, it never quite feels like you guys are fully listening, because it's like you've always got one part of your brain working to defend yourself.

Back to the actual topic of the thread, one of the things that you'll find that's clearly come up here is just: the community at large doesn't even agree on this. Most people will generally agree on certain, more obvious points: don't run big metaplot things to spotlight your character. But there's been distinct disagreement on things like whether or not staff PCs should ever have authority, whether or not players should ever run a PRP or scene centered on their character, etc. Which is why I've also kind of brought up the point where, if you've identified having trouble balancing, you should probably err on the side of caution here, if only to build up habits of being aware and working to build goodwill and reputation with your players.

This is Sansa.