Best posts made by Sunny

Anything that encourages people to work sick during a pandemic is a bad idea, leaving aside all of the other issues with such a policy. Rewarding people with financial value if they don't use days is straight up encouraging people to work sick.

I used to think that the IC world and consistency trumped OOC considerations, that actions should always have APPROPRIATE consequences (emphasis oldme's), that things need to not be realistic (because lol magic), but SENSIBLE. Sensible was absolutely a requirement in every way.

I've totally given that up in favor of #1 priority being 'everyone enjoying themselves' -- it doesn't always work, and sometimes there are conflicting goals and things, but I think it's a better approach to the hobby than IC being sacrosanct like I used to feel.

It really is OK to have your bloodthirsty monster of a character NOT be a bloodthirsty monster if the other person isn't going to enjoy that. That's a change in the last 5 years or so for me.

I just don't have the energy for the topic. I'm so freaking angry and frustrated at the way people are behaving that it makes me question even continuing to participate in this corner of the community.

I feel dismissed.

I feel marginalized.

Up until now, I would have maintained that while the hobby certainly has its issues, it's managed to avoid the worst of it and be something of a safe space, in general, to just be female. Presently, given the behavior of people that I otherwise respected, that I thought were understanding...yeah, no.

Way to turn a conversation about people being abused into something about why men feel bad when women talk about harassment/discrimination.So sorry that the fact that I was assaulted hurts somebody's feelings, or something.

Can somebody explain to me why it's problematic behavior to go:

p X=You ok?

@kk

I don't think anyone thinks it's easy, I think it's more that folks from the outside looking in are absolutely sure that, given what you've said, it's necessary. There's not a lot of frills or caveats being added because folks feel you absolutely 100% need to get out for your own safety and well being, and you're talking about it to people who are emotionally invested in your health.

Asking if someone is ok is not branding someone a creep.

Thank you for everything you've done for the mushing community and hosting soooooo many games. Your time, effort, expenses, and everything else you've put into it all has been appreciated. I wish you the best of luck in your future endeavors.

@Kanye-Qwest

I got this one. If a coded command is simple and easy to use, does NOT come with the expectation that I have to explain myself, and most importantly I have seen other people use it and it has played out to work as intended, yes. At least for me, it would remove the parts that trigger anxiety. Now, I actually speak up just fine these days, but that is only after a whole lot of RL coaching about unrelated stuff that happened to make a difference.

Code wise, I personally have found that taking apart someone else's code and reading all the related actual platform help files has always been far easier for me; you get to see it in action, and if you're a hands-on learner, that's the way to go. Generally you can't throw a rock around here without hitting code that's open for use, so that shouldn't be a problem for you.

As far as the rest of it -- ask your questions here, or message me with the sorts of things you want to know. I cannot help with the management of the site or getting that up and running, but @Glitch has a great tutorial up here.

As @Admiral said, do not do this alone. Not only do you need someone else to help with the extensive amounts of work, but you absolutely need a sounding board -- preferably two, so you can get two additional perspectives in addition to how you feel about something. Mind, I do not at all advocate approaching it in a 'we should compromise' fashion. Absolutely not. Make your decisions, but let them be made with input from others and perspectives you don't have.

There are a lot of foundational decisions that need to be made, and I highly recommend it be kept in mind for every single decision that you'll get the behavior that you reward. If you want a particular behavior from your playerbase, figure out a way to reward it.

Learn to be very clear. The job of staff is to provide the framework and tools for players to have fun within. The job of policy files is to lay out what OOC rules people have to follow, rather than just leaving it to the social contract. The job of your news files (wiki articles, whatever) in general is to lay out specifically what game you are playing, how you're playing it, and what people should be expecting playing with you. It is the best (and really, only realistic) way to communicate your vision, to make certain that everyone involved can see it.

Most games utterly fail at this, which is why there's so many problems. Nobody ever outright states: This is a game in which we will be focusing on the interpersonal drama between characters; we aren't bothering with realism, and we play fast and loose with canon. They ought to, though -- then the game is exactly what it says on the tin, and people can make educated decisions as to whether or not your place is right for them. This is an area that always involves TONS of miscommunication. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to make your vision so clear that everybody knows what they're getting in to.

The best resources out there are the people on this board, really. I don't know that there are many help guides out there. Amberyl's Mush Manual is actually really a helpful read. A good chunk of it is outdated and unrelated, but there is enough information there that I do recommend reading it:

http://www.groundline.net/eu-mush/mushman/

I found that link just with a search, but it does look like everything is there.

Take your time, take it slow. Don't get people hyped up too early and let them pressure you into moving forward when you're not ready.

Once you open the game, even for soft RP, kiss any thought of further game development goodbye. You will be handling day-to-day stuff so much that it will be a nightmare to continue working on any of the foundations of the game. If you then take too long to make those foundation decisions and change something that people have gotten used to, you risk alienating your playerbase in a major way. Get all the important-to-you stuff done before you open the doors to anybody but your chosen few.

http://fort.chrysalis.me/wiki/Fate's_Tithe

This is the framework of how I personally build a game. I'm no longer doing this Pern game (at least right now), but you can see how I do it. Wiki stuff means I have been able to move away from doing it with a combination of bbposts, jobs, and notepad -- it's way helpful. There are a lot of decisions that have to be made (though a lot of those on that link are specific issues that the Pern genre has, I promise most games don't have to explicitly state that PCs can't get pregnant without the consent of all involved parties OOC). What I do is make a list of what I think needs to be done. I go through and make the big sweeping decisions, write them down. Then I discuss what I feel needs to be discussed, make the rest of the decisions, make little notes. Create links with the specific items, drop more in-depth notes and discussions there, things to consider/read, places to look, whatever. Then you just start writing the files to fill in the holes and take it from framework-sketch to actual news files/wiki articles.

Last tip: Bad staff is worse than no staff. Always. It's tempting to say 'oh, they're really active, that outweighs (this negative quality)'. It does not. Ever. Down the road you will have WAY more work to do than you will have slowly addressing all the things yourself. Bad staff poison the well, and there's very rarely any coming back from that no matter how awesome you personally are.

@wahoo

I am going to disagree with this point again. No great houses are being punished. The loss of a couple of tens of thousands of silver shouldn't even be a blip on the radar. Same with the prestige loss. They are TRIVIALLY EASY when compared to the amount of work an elevation takes for the person being lifted. Inconvenienced? Sure, I'll buy that. Punished is extreme.

@demiurge said in Dreamwalk MUSH:

As for your personal recourse, you can CHANNEL/MUTE COL to make it go away. Is that helpful?

No. It is not. I think it's VERY IMPORTANT that you make this stance VERY CLEAR on the game itself and your wiki if it already isn't. It is not a BAD thing to say "I value the integrity of the IC world over the safety of my players", it's a design choice. It's a design choice that will exclude a lot of people that you may or may not intend to exclude, but every design choice is likely to do that somewhere.

@Testament

Some of us are enjoying the current game?

ETA: I have an arc I have been working on for almost an OOC year. I'd like to finish it.

I want to make sure I understand this.

The people who quit the game and are railing about how awful things are here SO VERY LOUDLY played the first handful of days on a game that is only a month or so old, and are basing their opinions on what was ICly a hugely traumatic/dramatic situation for all of the characters. They are not taking into consideration the increase in the playerbase, that people are now starting to settle into their characters, that the immediate BOOM of brand new PCs in a highly traumatic situation is over, or that the characters in question have perhaps learned a bit and changed.

There are people claiming how this game is based on some other game, that have not played on this one, taking potshots at the game for fun.

Staff have asked people to let them know if they're currently having problems on the OOC level that they can address, and have stated pretty clearly that they will not be dictating character attitudes. .

@surreality I have seen several things done that were people going off by themselves to Do Stuff without staff-alts being involved in even making the suggestion for The Stuff Being Done, so I feel it's safe to say that there is support for folks to go do their awesome thing.

Thanks in addition to the people that tagged her. I should have in my original post.

@faraday thank you for all that you do.

@thenomain

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/26/health/obese-patients-health-care.html

It's not some only-personal-experience anecdote thing she's talking about. There are a TON of credible sources that discuss this as a significant issue.

The audacity of one of my PCs. I love it. It makes me giggle endlessly. I freaking love my characters (all three of them) right now SO MUCH. They are all just delightful, even if my main is midst walking through her own personal hell in a lot of ways.

Also, having RP partners that understand that heavy RP is heavy and can have an emotional impact, and who behave with above-and-beyond levels of caring surrounding it. While I miss my PVP days on occasion, I am finding more and more than I have more CONSISTENT and REGULAR fun in PVE environments when I aim my focus on collaboration.

If an apology begins 'I am sorry you...' it's a good indicator that the person is deflecting, not apologizing. Actual apologies involve accepting accountability for whatever you did. It's not bloody complicated.

'I am sorry I...'

Not

'I am sorry you"...'

@mietze said in A bit of trouble on Firefly:

Sadly stalking isn't a big deal to a lot of people. When I explained some stalking and harassment that happened to me and was scaring me at my business, I was told to "adult more" if I wanted to be a business owner and btw was I sure I wasnt just being too sensitive? Wouldnt want to besmirch that person's reputation if I'd just misinterpreted his actions. That really shocked and hurt me but it should not have really given what we have historically tolerated in behavior on games.

This is why I really have very little trust in our community's willingness to really deal with problems until a game runner proves otherwise, and I operate on the expectation that they will always err on the side of people who harass or have that history until it is too bad to ignore.

I mean, MSB isn't safe. I know it's not safe, and when I'm feeling unwell I avoid it because it's unsafe. And I don't mean in the Hogpit way, I mean in the 'if I'm actively harassed, if someone is trying to harm me, if somebody shows up and starts doing genuinely bad things I can trust that the people running it will help' -- it's just not safe around here. I participate in a lot of places that aren't safe, by choice and with my eyes open -- but yeah. This community as a whole is terrible for that, and even MSB is really, really unsafe in that fashion.

ETA: The copious amount of victim blaming that goes on here is another really big example of what I'm talking about.

@Gilette

Gaming is a social activity to me. The whole point of this for me is enjoying it with other people. Otherwise I'd be off writing a novel. I spend a hell of a lot of time with some of these folks, it seems strange to me that we wouldn't be friends. I recognize that other people have different approaches (see: Gany and I having VERY different views on this) though, and thus I don't try to force it on anyone. But 'friends first, game second' on a person to person level? That doesn't seem strange to me. I approach tabletop that way, and my guild on WoW, and every other gaming-related thing I do that's not playing a single player game. But seriously, while I recognize that others have different approaches, I can't quite wrap my brain around it all the same. Why would anyone spend so much time with people that they aren't friends with? It's a foreign mindset to me.

@Groth

That was literally her point.

ETA: People will not provide the empathy/understanding right now that they usually would because they think their few months social isolation is exactly the same. THAT IS WHAT SHE SAID.