Posts made by Sunny

Easier than the flu shot, at least.

Getting my vaccine in like 2 seconds. Anxiety has me in tears. Logic says this will be fine but the lizard brain is in full meltdown. Sigh.

Does everybody not have a soundtrack in their head? Is this actually an ADD thing?? wat?

@cobalt

I am not sure if I am presently up for such things, but I really appreciate the invitation!

so. um.

Valheim?

It was nice knowing everybody.

eta: It's like playing Minecraft for the first time again.

My favorite Texan has reported in. She doesn't come around these parts that I know of, but she's OK now! It was a really rough few days from what I heard.

@pyrephox

Someday I’m gonna make a game in that world. I have permission. She was thrilled to be asked. She is super nice and super engaged with her fans.

@arkandel

I was talking to @Ganymede, thank you.

eta: I already know where YOU stand on this issue. I don't need clarification, I promise.

@ganymede

Yep. Thank you. I really appreciate the clarification.

@greenflashlight

I apologize if I didn't come across with my disapproval of the guy strongly enough. I do not think it's bad that people are happy that he's dead. That is not what I mean. I am upset because it's OK to celebrate somebody being dead, but not to mention that a rapist was a rapist.

@ganymede

This situation bothers me from the perspective of what happened when a rapist was being lionized here after his death. A lot. I am feeling particularly bothered by how this is allowed, and how talking about the rapist being a rapist was not.

eta: like I hope this guy gets whatever he deserves in the afterlife, but I am really bothered about the difference in what's allowed and not.

eta2: like, what level of badness means that it's OK to be happy he's dead in-thread? rape clearly doesn't count, so where's the line?

@wretched

It looks so goooooooooooooooooooooooooooood. Nice job!!!

https://sites.lsa.umich.edu/inclusive-teaching/inclusive-classrooms/an-introduction-to-content-warnings-and-trigger-warnings/

eta: 2 minutes of research. Less than two minutes of research. This is simple, easily laid out, and explains the topic from top to bottom. If you're confused and think genuinely that this has anything to do with content warning: penguins, this should hopefully assist in at least understanding what people are asking for.

eta2: A quote:
While there has been much debate over the implementation of content warnings in the classroom, the debate stems primarily from a misunderstanding regarding what content warnings are, how their use can make a classroom more inclusive for students with mental health disabilities, and how they do or don’t impact instructor liability.

eta3: Another quote:
Many feel defensive and resistant to the inclusion of content warnings, feeling as though it puts restrictions on the instructor and coddles the students. The inclusion of content warnings is neither restrictive (it does not label anything as off limits to teach) nor coddling (it does not assume that students can’t handle the material, on the contrary, it treats them as adults who can and should attend to their own wellbeing with all available information).

@saosmash

The best part is that my team is playing along. We might actually get this one adopted. They like the unicorns too! AAAAAH!

We are switching from Smartsheet to Asana for project management software. Asana lets me post unicorns and confetti on completed tasks. This program is ABSOLUTELY the best thing I have ever seen.

@saosmash

Yeah, if it exists and people aren't using it, then further guidance on how a game expects people to use it is needed (examples, provide language to use, restrict people to picking off a list and if they need something not there they have to ask for it). Gotta model the behavior before people will adopt it.

eta: like...'so you want to run a plot on this game, signup for a 15 minute training session to discuss how we expect these tools to be used'. I do NOT understand why more games don't do training sessions, it was always HUGELY helpful for keeping things running IME. I trained every one of my staffers; we had discussions about my expectations and how I wanted them to do things. I missed some terrible, glaring issues of course -- but taking 20 minutes to preload someone with what I needed them to be doing...was a lot easier than cleaning up the messes, let me tell you.

eta2: take this with a grain of salt. I also did essay tests for elder vampire applications to test their understanding of the material before I gave them a feature. this was bad. this was so bad. I had different tests for different power levels.

I think it would be neat to see a game implement a content warning system for plots/events. You'd need a structure for keeping plots that people could access -- runner, duration, signups available, whatever other info the game feels they need (like asych/real time or something) -- and then just a tag system with a list of predefined tags. The goal really wouldn't be to actually get everything into the system; 100% adoption is impossible and undesired (because you still want to allow for spontaneity, I'd think). The goal would be giving people a consistent language to use and creating a cultural expectation that this stuff should be communicated.

eta: like, no, movie ratings wouldn't work for a variety of reasons, but I don't understand why a game could not come up with their own system? Remember, perfect is the enemy of good.

I feel like there's a lot of confusion around the differences between "being censored" and "not being owed an audience". People refusing to pay money for a product because the themes are racist isn't stifling anyone, and them TALKING about the themes being racist (and thus, why they aren't paying money for it) isn't censoring and/or shutting anyone up.

eta: if you care about people not saying your shit is racist, then put the work in to make it not be racist. if you can't write your genre without being a racist jerk, then pick another genre.

So, let's say we sit down to have a plot, and my plot is the investigation about a murdered kid. One of my players is genuinely upset by violence to children, particularly of the sort that we're looking at. They let me know this two seconds before "game on".

If I can substitute a fully-grown cousin instead of somebody's kid without it materially impacting my plan / ruining the evening, there's really no reason for me to not do it.

If it can't be changed without ruining the whole night (clues and motivations and things don't make sense, whatever), then we work together to give the player a comfortable exit and then we go on with the original plan.

#1 doesn't hurt me. It doesn't hurt my other players. #2 isn't bad, either -- it sucks for the traumatized person, but I would so rather sit a night out without my friends hating me for it (or feeling like jerks for it!!) than try and stumble through this sort of mindfield.

I hit a trigger of one of my players at a meat-space tabletop game I was running once. Full on straight up triggered her. It was possibly the worst experience of my gaming history, it tanked the game completely, and we never picked a session back up. If I could have a do-over...I wish, wish, wish, wish, REALLY wish we'd had a conversation at the outset of the game for what sorts of things people couldn't handle, but the group I was playing with at the time went LOL a lot about people being "offended" (rather than harmed) by content in "just a game".

I felt so small, like such a jerk, like a terrible person, because while it was all in good fun, it was directly my words that had that impact on her and it was awful.

ETA: I cannot overstate how awful it is to be engaged with somebody's trauma like this and KNOW that you're the one that instigated what's going on. Save yourself this trouble and communicate potentially sticky shit BEFORE you get into it. I knew the content was problematic in general, but my players loved the twisted/dark stuff, and it was not any worse than any of the rest of it (was tamer, really) EXCEPT that it related to actual trauma somebody had personally dealt with.

Was it my job to communicate first and be aware of this? I mean, probably not in the strictest of senses. Would it have saved my table and a lot of heartache? Absolutely.

Would I have rather had my players laugh AT me for having the conversation, than upset one of them like this? yes. yes. yes. a million times yes. They're gonna laugh at me and my funny voices anyway.