@Sovereign said:
You run the risk of concepts and characters anathema to the theme crowding in, but this is a matter your staff ought to be able to handle promptly. It is trivial to address on a case-by-case basis.
How I wish this was actually true more often than not. 
Never underestimate the level of raw chaos that can be unleashed by a player or group of players when they are told they will have to adapt an idea to fall in line with theme or even the rules of the game.
@Sovereign said:
At this point, I treat it a lot like folks who say "I hate drama" - baby, you make more drama than a playwright.
I keep the following linked and on hand for just that reason:
And so many more. It's amazIng how a brief scan of that image collection can un-bleak the worldview.
@Pandora The 'you abandoned me' thing came up in someone else's post earlier (though I can't go dig for it now), so I don't think anyone was trying to imply you came up with that one. It was one of the examples someone gave as the reason they would use for someone else not being there -- as in, the player is not connected, and instead of going with a neutral 'he just wasn't there', the person looking for them went to the 'he wasn't there because he abandoned me and left us in the lurch that bastard!' kind of place.
I see a difference between the two there; one is 'he's just not there', the other power-poses the reasons he's not there on the other player, so instead of 'come up with a reason I wasn't there', the other player is stuck with 'come up with a reason my character abandoned people and left them in the lurch', which are pretty different things to have to explain or justify IC.
Polite request that yet another thread does not become a yet another WoD/CoD/etc. sales pitch?
@Cupcake said in Fanbase entitlement:
There's this one dude on a game I play on who constantly rants about hating Olicity and what he feels is the over-focus on Felicity in general to the point where he calls it "Felicity and Friends".
I would watch the shit out of "Felicity and Friends". Can we have that? Can that actually be a thing, maybe? Because all that needs is a dash of cheeky Merlin banter and some Flash cast cameos thrown in once in a while to be totally worth it.
Now I gotta grump some because we will probably never get that, but dangit... I want it now. Really kinda a lot. Why can't that be a thing? <sigh>
@surreality said in Making a MU* of your own:
I don't think I'd, personally, drag a bunch of people into something and do the MUX equivalent of the old movie classic of, "Hey, guys, let's put on a show!"
This hat I'm eating, it's positively full of crow.
@mietze said in Feedback request, round #1:
"wow, it really is okay if I forward that mail or submit that log to staff because they care about if someone is doing those things."
Yup, very much this.
I'm also trying to show, in the examples, why the dickish behavior is harmful, usually to more than just the direct target of the person being a dick, and creates an increasingly toxic game environment. I don't know how often or well I'm succeeding in that, but especially for the folks who don't realize why something that seems like a minor slight at best or don't think it's harmful actually can be.
What's especially unfortunate about this is that when somebody new -- or from a different style of game -- stumbles into one of these, and really doesn't get it, they're suddenly subject to a ton of screeching backlash and not only do they not know why, but they think we're a giant pile of complete loons.
For instance, a number of games have lock mechanisms with lockpick setups and so on that would allow someone to enter a private home with only the code as oversight; someone accustomed to that in the games they're playing may not think twice about walking right into someone's private scene in their private home, which is something generally frowned upon on a MUSH or MUX. That is completely acceptable on games similar enough to ours that innocent confusion on the part of a new player is very likely. Since the players on the game don't necessarily know the new player really is new to this style of game, there's a recipe for screeching and drama and explosions here that is totally avoidable, along with the hard feelings on all sides that it generates, which have potential to linger on long past the initial conflict and sour people's play experience down the line.
While it's not possible to stave all of that off, trying to be aware of as many of our 'unspoken rules' and actually speaking them aloud, well -- it's spammy as hell. But it's something I genuinely feel is worth the time, for both the old guard, and the new arrivals, because they're not always intuitive unless someone is already familiar with the typical community on a MUSH or MUX, which not everyone is. It's a huge hurdle for new folks, and one that isn't entirely fair. It's not a case of people being jerks to each other in any way, or any bad intentions at all -- it's one of those genuinely innocent misunderstandings that (the collective) we can probably avoid better than we sometimes do.
There's actually an intro for the policy page that seems to have gone the way of the dodo somewhere along the line that went into that (oops!) but it's covered pretty well in the 'community' section. It's probably worth popping that back up to the top, I think.
@Quibbler Which browser are you using? I know some of the lower trailing letter bits overlap, but ideally they shouldn't be clipping, so I'd like to check that out. (The lower margin on that font is huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuge, so it was a gapfest of scrolling hell otherwise.)
@Miss-Demeanor said in House Rules vs Rules as Written:
@surreality The biggest issue I have with what you're saying is that you're taking a few sentences in the start of the WoD/CoD books and waving them about like a Get Out of Jail Free card.
I have to ask -- where exactly am I saying this? I'm saying: the canon material suggests doing this. The canon material has suggested this repeatedly and often since 1991, and has not changed its stance on this. By saying, 'stick to the canon' in the case of WoD/etc., you're choosing to ignore that this, actually, is a part of the canon.
Yes, the book states you can change whatever doesn't work for you... in the context of a small group setting in which everyone can relatively easily agree upon what will be changed and how. Blanket applying that statement to the entire gameline as its being translated to MUSHes is about as ridiculous as expecting there to be no House Rules ever, at all. Its the opposing ends of the spectrum.
I really don't see this in what I'm saying at all. Again, see the above -- that is in the canon.
Systems require more or less translation for different circumstances. We would not have different rulesets for LARP and tabletop if this was not a basic reality on the ground. That the authors recognize this is a plus, because the actual canon is often vague, inconsistent, or otherwise unclear.
As I stated earlier: the most common form of house rule is a determination of which interpretation of an ambiguous writeup or mechanic is going to be on that game for purposes of consistency. This doesn't actually change anything; it simply clarifies which of several potential interpretations is going to be in use on the game to ensure fairness and to provide reference for multiple STs to all be on the same page. That's pretty important.
No House Rules Ever means the game will have areas where it fails hard and no way to fix it. It will lead to frustration and disgruntlement, and the best you can do is shrug and tell people to deal with it.
Agreed in full -- but it's what some are suggesting, and that in place of house rules of any kind, all you have to do is say "nope!" to have no problems ever -- and that's patently silly.
Do Whatever I Want Because the Book Says I Can leads to the game becoming so bloated with House Rules that its barely recognizable as a game and expects far more effort from its players to keep up with an ever-expanding body of House Rules.
I see house rules from almost the opposite end of the spectrum, actually.
It is typically to prevent a whole lot of 'do whatever I want' -- which happens fairly often. Again, it's often stuff people wouldn't try to get away with at a table or a LARP. Sometimes it's as simple as saying, "We're using the book rules exclusively for this, do not randomly add extra effects" -- this happened on TR, for instance, when players needed to be reminded that, yes, biokinesis has specific rules and effects, and it won't give you a magic wonderdong with extra impregnation powers or function as magical birth control just because a specific player decides to interpret the fluff that way. (Yes, that exactly happened.)
This is where TR and FC failed (partly, anyways). They both quickly became a 'if I don't like the way this works, I'll just whine til they change it' free-for-all, no matter how much it fucked over the people that were actually playing by the RAW. More than half of the House Rules on both games are utterly unnecessary, add little to nothing to the game, and could easily have been solved simply by telling someone 'this is how it works per the book, follow it'.
And ideally that's how it works, as I mentioned above.
Personally, I don't mind custom content tailored to a specific setting, provided it doesn't completely suck, and it is made available in a fair way to everyone (rather than 'I want a shiny so I'm going to make myself a special shiny!' because that's just bullshit).
tldr; House Rules for the sake of House Rules are confusing at best and actively thumb their noses at players at the worst. The books were written entirely within the context of a small group of dedicated players (including the part that says to change whatever you want).
There's a paradox here: yes, written for that context, including that.
Changes are inherently necessary for a different context. I keep repeating this, and we seem to agree on that point; people saying the tabletop as written is precisely how a MUX should operate are simply ignoring this like some inconvenient trivia, when it's absolutely not the case.
No, you're not going to get 100+ people to all agree about whatever the decision is about clarification #172 the way you might at a table with five buddies, but at the table you also don't have a dozen different STs at any given moment who are being confronted with how to handle situation #172 consistently for the game without that clarification that all need to be on the same page.
listal.com tends to have some interesting lists by 'type' sometimes. I've stumbled across a few gems there. Also willing to contribute suggestions; I seem to have weird luck with this (unless it's for myself then I am at a loss, I tend to find a face and then get inspired for the character in a flash of 'I KNOW WHO THIS IS!' -- which never works if I know who it actually is).
@mietze I'm about to say that being 'late teens' is the inception moment for Even Cant, defined as 'the blathering stammering of nonsensical babble that wants to be words that spills out of someone's mouth when presented with the impossibly stupid that somehow, everyone who just felt some of their brain cells die for the same reason understands completely nonetheless'.
Sort of like Thieves Cant, just, you know, for MSBites, and the things like this that we run into on games that reduce us all to slack-jawed fish-gape or confused puppy head-tilts. 
@Gilette said in Sensitive cultural/political/religious aspects of game themes.:
Anyway, as far as cultural/political/religious aspects goes... I teach history. It's probably why I take these things seriously. If you're going to set a game in the 40s, then I better see the cultural context. If you're going to set a game in the 40s and tiptoe around issues of race and gender then, hey, don't bother. Set it in modern times.
While I empathize a lot with 'this grates because I teach history', we all have things like that on games that ruffle our feathers. (Every seamstress with a perfect manicure ever, every fancy embroidered gown turned out from scratch overnight by a single person... I could go on here.)
The best you're really going to be able to hope for on most games is 'TV grade accuracy' -- which, yeah, varies in quality, but for a lot of things, that's going to be the most immersive understanding the average player is going to have of any given specific period they haven't personally lived through.
For the specific example of the 1940s, take a look at something like Agent Carter. They certainly don't address all the issues of the day and they don't cram the ones that do arise down the viewers' throats at every possible opportunity. Regardless, that story would not be that story if it was set in the modern day... at all. It does not suddenly become a story not worth telling without every horrible reality of that era being front and center in its most extreme form every moment.
One of the things that does actually aggravate me about games is when theme and 'reality' don't match up, like what @faraday points out with the exceptional becoming mainstream.
This isn't really theme and reality, though. Theme has nothing to do with it, really; it's a setting issue, specifically 'the percentage of atypical folks among PCs is higher than in the general population'. I'm with @ThatGuyThere on this one, however: PCs tend to be the exceptional folk in any given game world anyway. Provided they aren't taking it to a crazy snowflake place, it's not a huge issue to me.
@Thenomain said in Sensitive cultural/political/religious aspects of game themes.:
This. A million times this. I've also seen it referred to in the writing circles as "internal consistency" as why you can't just say "because magic", for example. You can find a way around these things without addressing them, but as has been said a few times before then maybe you shouldn't be hanging them on the 17th Century or perhaps make an entirely new universe that's kind of 17th Century-ish.
<facerubs> I may be reading too much into this in my painkiller haze (2016 just haaaad to get one more kick to my ass in there), but I've already stated I'm not going to make a full fantasy earth replacement. That is a non-option and it's remaining that way.
I do not think, "These things exist in the world, and you will encounter these attitudes, but you should not be forced to have your roleplay focus on them at all times to the exclusion of anything else," is an unreasonable attitude at all. It is also grossly unrealistic to expect that the sum total of someone's experience is going to focus on their gender, religion, or race to the extent that nothing else should be permitted to matter about the character.
This is miles from 'pretend the issue does not exist through the magic of handwavium'; they are not in any way the same thing, and people really do need to not equate the two.
Pretending the issues don't exist has another very important downside: some players wish to explore those challenges IC. Some players may want to make a character who adheres rigidly to those social expectations -- which is a challenge, too. Handwavium makes both of those things difficult if not impossible.
Much of what @faraday describes is, I feel, spot on. Exceptions have existed throughout history. Yes, the play experience is shifted if the PCs on grid are predominantly exceptions -- but I'm with @ThatGuyThere on PCs typically being exceptions in some form or another in almost any game out there. Quite a few of them in exist in the specific setting I'm looking at, in fact; what @meitze describes about the realities of a 'frontier society' and the manner in which necessity often drastically alters how strictly -- or not -- these things are adhered to. It's also a fairly multi-cultural setting for the era, which also has a noteworthy impact. (Read: it is diverse enough that not everyone is going to have those same cultural norms or expectations; it would be crazy moon logic to force Eurocentric cultural expectations from a Maori character, a Chinese one, etc.)
Because "sensitive" is personal. It's very, very personal. I personally don't think it's okay to tell someone that they're not allowed to be "sensitive" about something, which has made dealing with rust-belt unemployed voters both more stressful and more open.
Which is why I feel allowing players to explore these things if they wish, but state so clearly they don't want their entire play experience to revolve around them or be reduced to them exclusively if that's how they feel about it, is not an unreasonable choice.
FWIW, I have known Thenomain for a fairly long while on and off. We argue a lot and agree on... well, not a heck of a lot, sometimes. In all that time, though, I have never known him to blow smoke up someone's ass or issue a false compliment, or one meant to undercut someone else.