Best posts made by surreality

@Tinuviel said in A Constructive Thread About People We Might Not Like:

I think it's important that a game keeps internal records of troublesome players, especially games with a high staff employment rate (be it through simple turn-over or expansion). Naturally those records should be as confidential as we can make them.

I think this is actually pretty important regardless of the staff turnover rate. I have a pretty good memory, but I know I have misremembered things, or initially thought someone I was warned about was actually someone else (especially if a number of people were brought up in the conversation, and there's not really any conflict on a game that only involves one person, since it takes at least two for there to be friction of some kind). Confusion like this happens pretty easily, and it's usually an innocent mistake. It's why records help: they avoid memory glitches, help to avoid misattributions if they're made in the moment and can be reviewed for a quick 'ok, so this is what happened' (as in, if there's a mistaken attribution, it can be spotted before it becomes ingrained, repeated, etc.).

It helps keep new staff updated if they weren't around when Incidents 1-3 occurred, but making a record in the moment of the issue helps keep everybody on a more accurate track for a bunch of reasons.

@Sunny I'm pretty middle road on these issues, and the treatment I get from a lot of hardcore skeptics when I attempt to discuss them is extraordinarily hostile, mocking, insulting, and deliberately cruel.

So, on some level, I get where she's coming from.

I'm not saying this or that is somehow magically acceptable when it otherwise wouldn't be because of this. It's pretty obvious it's not.

So I get where you're coming from, too, on that point.

I am simply not going to join in the dogpiling from either direction, and keep replying to @Arkandel's posts like I have been, because I have zero interest in the drama side of this conversation. To me, it's a waste of time even by the standards of a place where we're all pretty much doing precisely that.

That moment when you're not sure if you're experiencing deja vu, or if this same reasonably obscure argument didn't happen in another thread just the other day, I have just had it.

@Arkandel I fail to care if that is on topic, that link is best link.

@Bobotron I have a list of 'consent subjects' I can send you, if it helps. I have a few things on there that might be helpful if you're looking for some of the 'potentially squick-based exceptions' that generate enough angst and drama that I feel it's easier to just require consent for them. Rape stuff, pregnancy stuff, also on that list. Also 'total personality change' (if somebody wanted to make a character with that totally different personality, they would have) and 'template change' (which is relevant if you're on a game that restricts alts by template, since it means the player could be forced to choose between two of their PCs that would otherwise be allowed to continue to exist -- this is typically a MU* only issue because alts and alt policy are a thing).

@Warma-Sheen said in Social Combat: Reusing Physical Combat System?:

No one ever socially forces anyone to do anything they don't want to do.

I think this actually nails it.

Social combat isn't about directly achieving a specific end. It's about creating the underlying conditions (wanting to) to get to that end.

Even physical combat works this way: you don't typically one-roll-kill someone. You add to damage, in stages, to bring about their death.

@Auspice Because you totally know us crazy liberals lurve censoring people to ensure Christian ideology is thoroughly upheld in every facet of media.

I, I'm sorry, I can't even continue there, because I simply cannot convey the level of sarcasm required to handle this. I just can't.

@Coin said in Social Combat: Reusing Physical Combat System?:

@surreality said in Social Combat: Reusing Physical Combat System?:

@Coin I dunno. I have no real objection to multiple rolls doing things with proper modifiers. (I may not want to play the character again after whatever it is, but that's a different issue.) Treating anything social as the equivalent of a one-shot-kill with superpower strength effects, though, is not horribly uncommon, and once somebody's been on the receiving end of this, I empathize strongly with the aversion developing.

I think the best storylines happen when people divorce themselves from their "vision" of the character they're playing and allow the story to mold and change them, including their interactions with others. But I can sympathize with the desire to play the character "as envisioned". I just think it's also one of the things that limits us from having truly great RP the most.

I think you're reading a little more into that than is really there.

For the really obvious example, I'm not at all interested, for instance, in playing a rape victim. On any given number of games, it's possible for that to occur. No, I'm not going to continue to play the character after that, even if it's entirely fair play to allow it to happen if the system says it does and there are no consent rules allowing an opt-out.

I'd FTB it, sure, but it still ICly happens, and I'm really just not interested in exploring that storyline at all in my pretendy fun times. It is non-enjoyable to me and I'm not going to waste my enjoyment time on that, nor should anyone ever feel obligated or pressured to do so in the name of some higher 'artistic roleplayer ideal'.

Edit: I agree with what you're saying re: the folks who just can never ever be lied to, or intimidated, or charmed, etc. But realistically, people absolutely have the right to have limits for what they consider an appropriate amount of non-enjoyment in their hobby time.

@Thenomain The uberliberal church in our area tends to say: come on in, we'll chat. We're not interested in converting anybody, but we'll happily explain what we think, and you're welcome to discuss your own beliefs, even if they're different.

No, really. It's a real place and everything. I'd link their web site if I remembered where the heck it was; if I had a car I'd go to some of their all-faiths discussion circles myself, and I'm not a fan of religion on the whole. It's kinda... awesome, actually.

@Coin They're definitely out there, yeah. (Especially irksome are the ones that love to talk endlessly on channels about the ninety things that they could do to <any random person>, but flip their shit if there's even a snowball's chance in hell that someone could do something that might have an impact on them somehow. )

I think this tends to be something that works out better on smaller games, where players are a little more likely to have run across each other more often in the course of play, too. There's a bit of a chance to build up some trust there, while that's more of a total crapshoot on any of the sprawling megagames.

It's worth mentioning that there are words that are generally useless in discussion that come up a lot. 'Magical' being prime among them.

Even supernatural simply means 'beyond our current scientific understanding'. It is not automatically 'pixies' and 'casting spells' and a lot of the other things that are ascribed to it -- usually, derisively -- as if to imply there's no mystery left to science, which is transparently bullshit. People simply don't use the term in those cases terribly often, because of those associations, and as a result, it's more or less useless.

The folks I know who leave the possibility open that 'weird' things exist that people generally put under those headings stick with unexplained, as calling something supernatural or paranormal presupposes a specific conclusion that they believe only might be the case.

(Unrelated to this thread, I send a virtual hug, @Vorpal. That's one hell of a day, damn. )

@Seraphim73 said in Social Combat: Reusing Physical Combat System?:

First I poked around at a system like @surreality mentioned, allowing PCs to have 1-3 Hills to Die On--things that were immutable about their character (ie, "No Mistreating Pets," "No Killing Kids," and "No Betraying the King" or something like that). These were then things that could not be changed with social combat. But I decided that it would be nearly impossible to police from a chargen perspective, and that many players would try to make these too broad ("Paragon of Virtue" or "Good Person" or "Never Cheats" or something like that) to give themselves as much defense as possible against social combat without investing in the appropriate stats. I do like the idea of them being modifiers rather than inviolate points.

This, I'm not worried about as much as I might be. Having staffed CoD for a while, which has custom breaking points and aspirations for every character, there are actually a lot of staffers versed in checking for this out there and in talking to players about setting them up appropriately. If there wasn't an existing example to reference, or there weren't any staffers out there who had dealt with similar things, I'd have more concern.

I've only seen this come up once in terms of a player being a dick about things, and that was Rex/Sovereign... so, y'know•. It's a less pervasive problem than might be imagined; people tend to behave themselves on these, even if that means being nudged to narrow things down some or clarify them.

• "The girl staffer is telling me to clarify a thing! I must demonstrate my dominance by trying to argue and swinging my dick around!" (You can all guess how well that went for him.)

@Pyrephox I'm not arguing that.

@Lotherio referenced a quote, suggesting 'believing in a thing harms no one'.

Well, that's not accurate. It absolutely can.

However. When you say, "that is untrue, believing in a thing is inherently bad, because of <this example>," you're just as factually inaccurate, because that example is not the only thing it can apply to.

It is something you simply cannot reasonably generalize about; there are far too many exceptions running contrary to either end of the spectrum of possibilities, and even more in the middle ground, because people lump so many things under this heading, from actual science they don't understand to mediums to world religions to ancient myths to medicine to casting spells.

Constantly in this thread, we've seen people talk about one thing, only to have completely irrelevant concepts to the specific thing they're discussing -- like 'magic' or 'pixies' or 'faith healers' or mercy-knows-what-else -- thrown in to claim the other unrelated thing is surely crap, so either there's some seriously intellectually disingenuous sleight of hand going on there, or people really do lump all of these subjects together. I'm not going to make a call on which is going on even if I lean toward the latter, but as far as observable phenomena go? Well, read the thread; it's all over the place.

And if we're being anal retentive about the specific definition and terminology of 'energy' and 'energy fields' and similar? Yeah, maybe we need to be specific in the same way across the board -- but that's consistently not happening here. (And it is pretty much bullshit.)

@Seraphim73 I'm stuck between 'core principles' and 'core motivations', personally. Core ideals? Ideals, maybe? Oddly, I like Ideals, since it meshes well with a stat called Identity. The initial repetition there might make a good relatable mnemonic.

Quick edit: this is the writeup I had for it:

For each dot a character possesses in the Identity attribute, choose a personal motivation. These motivations are considered to be the character's core drives, the ideas and ideals they consider integral to who they are.
These motivations should be fairly specific, such as:
I will not kill someone due to my religious beliefs
I will protect my children from physical harm
I want to earn my freedom from indentured service
I will not betray my captain's trust in me
I will not pass up an opportunity to turn a profit
I will not harm a child
These goals may have some flexibility, but they are not overly broad. Due to the benefits provided, some specificity and a fairly narrow interpretation is required.
For each listed motivation, the character receives +2 dice to resist attempts to force them to act against these core values, OR they may choose to reduce the target number to resist the attempt by 1 (to a minimum of target difficulty 2). These bonuses stack if multiple core values are being challenged. If acting in line with one core motivation means acting against another, the bonuses cancel each other out one for one.
If a character is attempting to convince or persuade another to do something that would be in line with one of their core motivations, it reduces the target difficulty of the attempt by one for each corresponding motivation to a minimum of target difficulty of two (2), but does not have the option of adding additional dice to the attempt. If doing so would cause the character to act against another of their core motivations, the same cancelation of benefits on a one for one basis applies.

...I plan to change some of the specific mechanics there, but the general idea comes across. It's also relevant that if someone's being asked to do something that supports their core motivations, it's going to be easier for the persuader to get them to join in the effort or take action.

@Pyrephox Re: ketchup on eggs, ugh, yes, agreed. I know many of the same kinds of folks, and my reactions to them vary from being chill with them to having the weirdest discussions ever that result in bizarre arguments... which should also surprise roughly no one without the need to be psychic.

What's being missed here, though? I was addressing a specific post, and a specific point in it.

I even had to go back and do it again, I mean... yeesh, you wanna talk about frustrated? Try doing that twice and still seeing people conflate all manner of other things into the mix.

"believing isn't inherently bad" -- again, too many examples either way for this statement to really stand as inherently true or false. Some instances, true. Some instances, false.

You can't generalize the truth or falsehood of the statement, however, from one instance, save for in reference to that instance.

What I am seeing, repeatedly, is essentially a lot of, "Bigfoot isn't real because magic is can't be proven to exist." "Ghosts can't be real because some religions make people do dangerous things." "Religious people are cultists because there's no demonstrable evidence that people can move things with their minds under lab conditions."

These are statements that makes no sense whatsoever, and they are what comes from conflating as much as is being consistently conflated throughout the thread.

Yeah, that is eye-rollingly frustrating, it's typical of over-generalizing and conflating too many things, and just... arrrrgh.

@Seraphim73 Seriously, please, use anything you find useful. If I ever get this thing done, I'm going to hand it out freely; it's all being developed for creative commons usage intentionally as it is, just in case it works/is liked/can be a tool for people to quick-start something of their own somehow.

There's a 1-5 standard range for humans, with some other races being able to get as high as 8 in certain things. It's WoD cloney that way, with the 1-5 and 2 as human average. So even if I ended up going with Identity + Willpower, that leaves the average human with 4 core motivations, which vibes right to me for the average person, who might have something like 'I will never cheat on my spouse', 'I will protect my children from bodily harm', 'I will <something relevant to job>', and 'I will never <something related to faith/faction membership/social status/etc.>' and feels like a typical standard normal person conceptually.

So long as they're properly specific, I don't mind people having a big pile, especially since the more of them they have, the more likely there will be a conflict that starts cancelling them out back and forth if they try to cover too much ground.

@Pondscum Many virtual hugs. I'm so sorry.

@faraday I agree that a week or two isn't a really huge deal. With the reality of everyone's schedules, that may only really ever have an impact on the smallest number of scenes for the affected parties. That isn't terribly unreasonable.

It's the extended leaves that really do bother me -- and the 'what do you mean things aren't saved, frozen in time, for me to step back into at my leisure?' mentality, which really is sometimes quite the issue.

For instance, on a game I will refrain from naming, there was someone who ran an active IC business. This player would regularly vanish for a month or more at a time, and was in and out of the deep freeze as this went on. All of their employees would have to figure out what to do with themselves, adjust for this serial vanisher, and finally when they had been gone for a rather egregious length of time, the business was handed off to someone else by staff. (This also included things like maintenance of the faction commands, channels, etc. -- which needed tending in this player's repeated absences.)

When they finally returned, there was enormous drama about all of this, and when apparently staff came down on the side of, "Sorry, this is far from the first time you've completely flaked and left everyone in limbo, so we're not taking things out of the hands of the people who have been running everything for the past several months to give back to you," not only did the player throw a whole summer stock festival season's worth of drama, they sought means of making all of those other players utterly miserable in and out of character in retaliation.

Personally, this is the kind of situation in which I have zero empathy for the missing person. Were I staff, and observed this transpire, the next 'month off' for that player would not exactly be voluntary.

@hedgehog said in RL Anger:

@surreality

With the exception of seeing old friends and a really great family trip to the Caribbean in January, 2016 is a fucking dismal shithole of a year.

2015 was that year for me. Business? Dead in someone else's bookkeeping error. (I avoided bankruptcy by, literally, under $100 come year's end. I consider this almost miraculous.) Ancient Cat? Cancer scare? (Thankfully no, but other issues.) Family with major health issues? Just... yeeeeeesh, it was one hell of a list, kicking off in May, and... I did make it past the anniversary of every possible thing goes straight to hell without the courtesy of a handbasket.

I am sorry you inherited the craptastic hell year. Nobody deserves that, ever.

Also, it means an extra layer of logins on a place that people may use for other, non-hobby related things.

Which gets sticky if someone is also active on wikidot for something not related to this hobby. There are just enough stalker issues that this could create more problems than it solves, unfortunately.

I'm lucking out with the creepy sparkle white when it comes in.

I have no idea when it began coming in, since I've been dyeing my hair strange colors since I was 13.

Then, one sad day, after I had let the roots grow out a while, I looked... and thought I had glitter and dust in my hair there was so much light sparkly shit going on in there.

I was wrong...

...so very wrong...