Best posts made by Roz

@Sparks Yeah. It kind of reminds me a bit of the situation with Tilda Swinton's casting in Dr. Strange. Where the director was like, "We didn't want to have a racist caricature for the Ancient One steeped in orientalism, so we...rewrote the character to be white instead." And man, Tilda Swinton is fucking awesome in every role she plays and there's no denying that, but that reasoning was still super bullshit on the director/movie team's part. (Guys, you don't reduce racist portrayals of things by...just making characters white instead.)

But if you, for instance, make a blanket ban on trans characters because of disrespectful or fetishized portrayals, and then have a player roll in to peek at your game who is actually trans IRL and see that, I cannot imagine that not feeling like shit even if the intentions were meant to be good ones. Because now you're in a situation where it's like, "Listen, we barred this concept that is part of your RL because people weren't respectful, and now you, person for whom this is an aspect of your real life, also can't include it or explore it." And, in the end, it basically sets it up as, "We just don't want to deal with the difficulty of telling people to be respectful with your identity, so we're just going to make a rule against it." That is: "This identity isn't worth our time to protect" swiftly becomes "You are not worth our time to protect."

I like rosters having PBs so long as they're also not set in stone and can be changed. Unless, like, all the rosters had terrible PBs. I'd probably judge that.

@Joyeuse I will disagree with Ghost's point: if you haven't had issues as of yet with other players such that you have reason to feel someone's focused on you, playlists can indeed be a source of fun reunion. I think people should be thoughtful about what they reveal to strangers on the internet, obviously, but on the other hand I don't think a practically brand new player needs to excessively cover their tracks. I'd say most (not all, I know) players don't really encounter issues with having their playlists up. You can definitely choose the route of being a relative enigma, some people do, but I don't want you to feel scared off of a more personable route. There are safe ways to do it, especially if you have good boundaries.

@magee101 There are lots of great players who still don't actually love the process of trying to second-guess whether it makes sense for them to have come to an IC conclusion they knew about OOC. Good players absolutely don't want to metagame, but they can also recognize that it can be hard to avoid doing it subconsciously and also exhausting the continually second-guess themselves. It's not as simple as "If your players are good they won't use that info." There are plenty of reasons why players who don't want to metagame would still prefer some information being kept hidden from them on certain types of games.

Some people just have a talent for picking up clues and putting together answers. I've known players who become infamous for coming up with potential answers that the GM goes "damn I wish it WAS that." It usually doesn't really have anything to do with intelligence or inside information; some people just have a knack for it. Maybe a certain level of experience with a GM might give a player an instinct for their particular style, the way that playing a bunch of point-and-click adventure games gives you an instinct for how a certain series might approach/construct their puzzles, but that's just familiarity.

tl;dr some people just have a knack for it

@Auspice said in Old Republic Star Wars Game - FFG System Poll:

@Roz said in Old Republic Star Wars Game - FFG System Poll:

@Sunny said in Old Republic Star Wars Game - FFG System Poll:

I would play literally any system if it meant I could Old Republic it up I don't even care.

Yeah, I don't really know any of the systems. I just always want an Old Republic game.

because old republic is best republic

It just seems really ideal for a MU* setting? Just in terms of, like -- you've got some well-defined factions and it bypasses a thing I've heard a lot with people complaining about super limited Force user slots and whatnot. It's a time when Force users are common on both sides, there's a rich dynamic, etc.

@RDC

@fatefan I would LOVE an Avatar game. I honestly think that Republic City is a fantastic setting, given its existence as a centralized locale and the diversity of its populace. It allows people to bring in characters from all over but have a reason to be in the same place. I'd definitely rate "Opportunities for easily grouping together PCs in scenes" pretty highly, as I feel like it often gets forgotten in MU* development.

Frankly, considering the age I started MU*ing at, I consider myself very lucky that I didn't end up victim to anything.

Newer codebases removing command prefixes is literally the best thing to happen to this hobby in like 20 years.

I don't think I've been on a game with a real OOC lounge for years now and I sure haven't missed them at all.

@Kestrel That sucks and I'm sorry.

@silverfox Don't think of that as a choice that you're making. You have a bedtime, which most working adults do, and that's when your availability falls into. Thinking of this as just a choice you're making implies that we shouldn't think of our sleep as part of our schedules when it comes to RP availability, which is a recipe for burnout.

ETA: And I say that as someone who had to seriously adjust her availability after starting a new job in the fall, and I very much understand the frustration of not being able to stay up late anymore for RP stuff.

what in the world--

@Pandora said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:

@Rinel said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:

My point is that "male socialized" people playing lesbians isn't necessarily a cause of poor lesbian representation, since lesbians with that alleged quality exist. It's like saying "a lot of redheads play lesbians; lesbian representation isn't great."

I'm not going to lie and start saying that men playing lesbians hasn't been terrible for lesbian representation because it's now not PC to say something that's been true forever and will continue to be true forever. If it doesn't apply to you/someone you know/someone you've heard of, that's great and I'm not debating it.

I think Rinel's point was more that some people raised with male socialization are actually lesbians themselves (because they are trans women).

@tinuviel said in A healthy game culture:

@faraday said in A healthy game culture:

It is naive to deny the fact that people behave differently

People choose to behave differently. Choose. Putting all the blame on the game itself is taking all the blame away from people that act like fuckwads.

If you run a game, any game, on which people feel free to act like assholes? Either you are at fault, or they are. Or likely a combination of the two. Nobody gets to use "the system we're using is designed that way" as an excuse.

No one is talking about using it as an excuse? It is not about shifting blame. It is about being aware of patterns certain structures can encourage in people so that you can be best prepared to respond and deal with them. Which includes, yes, getting rid of people who are being assholes. Or adjusting how a game is being run. The point is that recognizing certain patterns can allow people to more proactively prepare for more likely possibilities.

I played on an X-Men movieverse game where the PCs were secret government agents all working at a front company and we'd lampshade it by having the townies occasionally comment on how attractive all the company's employees were.

@derp said in GMs and Players:

@icanbeyourmuse said in GMs and Players:

Assume on your game for a moment she was a player who said it that exact way. It might be better to ask what actions she expects to be taken and if there was a reason she suspected/knows it is her ex.

I mean, I'm not even going to go into that level of detail, honestly. As stated, if someone says 'hey this is my creepy ex, help', I am going to tell them exactly what I told them: Tell them not to contact you, and if they continue to contact you, report it and we'll handle it.

If someone is stalking you, you are absolutely not supposed to make contact with them.

This thread is so strange. I see multiple people talking straight past each other and basically reading the worst possible versions of what people are saying. I feel like everyone here is already basically agreeing that communication of potentially triggering themes -- for the major expected triggers, come on, we all know we can't do content warnings about every potential trigger ever, that doesn't mean we shouldn't try to hit the major common ones -- is a good thing. And that having methods of communicating that on both sides (player and GM) is even better.

And yet I've seen people on this thread basically misreading stuff to be like, "You're saying that I'm a terrible person because I don't want to put up an outline of my entire plot!!!" I don't know. I feel like people are not so far apart on this as it seems to have come about in this thread. Yes, we all know no one can warn for everything. We all know that things come up via GM improv. Obviously there is no foolproof system. The idea of having a basic content warning for major specific themes that you know are going to be in your plot seems pretty simple and easy. The idea of being able to list major triggers you have and want to avoid in RP player-side also seems pretty simple and easy.

It sounds like there are some GMs on this thread who have basically developed systems of their own that they have used successfully, which is great. I mean, people being thoughtful and deliberate about making effort to keep folks comfortable with the RP they're engaging in is really the main point. I don't think people are so far apart on this as it seems.

@Apos Anything with XP incentives will be popular.