Best posts made by surreality

@GreenFlashlight <calmly wipes down the monitor> Costumer dude in that series is the real hero, no lie.

@Prototart I used to keep a couple of alts logged in to idle.

The same few dudes would always page with the random requests, and they were just going down the list and paging every mistress with this.

I know this because I'd see the same page appear on two or more screens within 20 minutes from the same person.

Once, I called them on it and said I am not inclined to RP with someone who does that, because their so-called 'interest in my fascinating concept' was obviously nonsense, if they're paging the same thing verbatim to every mistress on the game.

Dude swears with all the faux offense he can muster he isn't doing that.

...until I c+p the pages he sent to the two other windows over to him with the timestamps, at which he swears a lot and demands I never contact him again. (This is aces OK by me, after all he's the one who contacted me.)

Was the same dude so cosmically stupid that he still did the same thing (on all three windows) three days later?

YOU BET HE WAS.

There actually are players who simply expect you to do all the work of a scene. I'm not talking about as a ST here, either. It seems to happen most often on Shang, but I've seen it in less intensive incarnations elsewhere.

Essentially, these people will cheerfully tell you in detail what they want and expect you to make it happen in floridly excruciating detail, at length, and you end up getting little more than half a grunt back by comparison in terms of their response poses, which almost never include anything you can work with.

It is essentially, "Write a short story about my character for me in which I get to do X."

There's a lot that ultimately goes into this -- on the primary thread subject, that is. (I would diagram this to make it easier to follow but this ain't wiki, so we're probably all fucked if my usual communication fail is in play. Sorry, y'all. Seriously, this is some flowchart-requiring shit.)

First: is it reality, or perception?

Frankly, much as we may not want to admit it, sometimes it is the reality. If it's the reality, why?

People can be cliquish in the bad way; sometimes they realize it and sometimes they don't. People can be exclusionary or distrustful or might simply be jerks. They might just be there to hang out with a handful of close friends that are the only thing keeping them in the hobby at all these days and not have time in their RL schedule for more, which, while it isn't deliberately exclusionary or any value judgment on the outside party, ultimately has the same end result.

More complicated is this: sometimes it isn't the other people. Sometimes it's us. Sometimes what we want out of the game is not what the game is designed to be, or is out of step with the game's culture. Sometimes games will adapt or players will play along or find these new avenues interesting, but that's a case of fighting inertia, which realistically is not often going to be a very successful prospect. It doesn't mean we're doing something wrong, or that what we want is somehow bad or wrong, it's just not what the game culture has evolved to be or include. The people who go there generally go there because they like what it is and what it currently offers. (Though plenty of us play on games despite what they are, and everyone sucks something up to a greater or lesser degree about any given game, the good has to outweigh the bad for anybody remotely sane to stick around.)

'Fish out of water' can be a fun character type to play, but it happens on the player level, too. Sometimes people shy away from players like this because they just don't get what that player is trying to do, or feel they're out of sync with what drew them to the game in the first place. Again, what I'm talking about isn't something bad about the game itself or about the player who feels excluded, but of the player having different expectations of the game and/or its culture in a way that hasn't been addressed directly in the thread before (as it was with the 'level of welcome/invitation to things'). Examples:

• A highly PvP-focused player arrives on a game with a long-standing exclusively PvE culture and proceeds to play as they always have elsewhere.

• A player accustomed to highly specific code for many details of their existence, such as an RPI might have, arrives on a game with minimal code, and asks where the commands to make sure they've eaten that day are, then requests staff add these things because 'it's just not a game without them'.

• A player seeking an elaborate and in-depth metaplot and major staff storyteller presence guiding the course of events arrives on a sandbox game, where staff primarily alter the world to reflect what they players have impacted the setting if the players run plots and events that create these changes on their own initiative.

...none of these wants, play styles, etc. are bad or wrong. They're simply a better or worse fit for any given game. No game is going to be all things to all people, and it's a mistake to try. (It's a recipe for failure.)

These things can contribute to making a player unwelcome in reality in two important ways: other players may feel they're unwelcome or not want to interact with them, or, more subtly -- but I think a lot more commonly -- the player feels they don't fit.

I think there's a lot more self-awareness on this latter front than there once was; I know I see a lot more 'the place is fine, it's just not for me/it's not my style/it wasn't what I'm looking for' than I did years back. The sad truth is, not everybody has that self-awareness. They just see people shying away, and may not understand why, or how their expectations are impacting the situation. Without that awareness, they're just left with the sting, uncertainty, and feeling more and more unwelcome. (Which sucks.)

Even the generally more with-it folks I know, I've often seen say things like, "That game is just dumb because <reason that boils down to it not being exactly the opposite of everything it says it actually is>!" No, the game isn't stupid. You just want something out of it that it isn't designed or intended to provide for you. (Another reason that labeling intent and focus is important.) It doesn't make you stupid, either, but it's still something of a self-awareness fail. I do not go to Taco Bell and order Chinese food, after all -- so why would I go to a game labeled 'sandbox' and expect to be fed endless metaplot and staff-led PrPs? Why would I go to a game with heavy code and expect to just be able to ignore it all because I personally find it no fun to interact with extensive code?

All of that can contribute to a wholly internal sense of 'what I want isn't what I'm getting here', which, unless somebody's really paying attention to the fine points, can feel a hell of a lot like 'I'm not wanted here' after a while. It's understandable from both sides: you're looking for something the game doesn't really provide, and you're asking for something the game's culture has not evolved to give you. While there are rare exceptions, generally, this is going to lead to someone being progressively less involved with others on the game. You're not getting what it is you're really looking for, so you invest less. You're asking people for something that isn't what they're interested in, so they take you up on your offers less or invite you around less.

Both of these reactions are entirely normal and they are not indicative of 'bad' or 'wrong' or anything of the kind. They're pretty much the standard evolution of this rather typical reality. That process of weighing the good and the bad of a place to determine whether you're going to stay or not? As this progresses, 'leave' tends to get more appealing, even if the player trying to balance those scales isn't entirely aware of why.

It's a lot more subtle than being outright ignored in a scene, or having no one respond to offers of RP, but I have a strong suspicion it is a lot more common than either of those things are or ever will be.

...as to the perception thing, that's kinda been covered already.

Seconding the specific point on language choice. This is pretty much the one thing I ever got uneasy about, as in, 'what language choice/writing style is going to be appropriate here'.

I just ask. Ask if there are hate-on words, in particular, and more generally about style: 'flowery, euphemistic, or blunt'? Sometimes any of the above work and it really comes down to the mood and tone of the scene itself: sometimes if people are equally flexible on the word choice/general, that just becomes another tool in the box that can be used to convey the mood and tone of the scene. This can be seriously awesome; at times that switchup from 'the norm' for the characters can be very revealing -- and I mean on a characterization level, not a 'more clothes than usual hit the floor' level.

On the personal yay/nay front, I'll second (or third or fourth... ) the idea of keeping away from things that are undesirable -- but also would suggest being cautious about incorporating 'likes'. If it doesn't fit the scene or the characters, this can come across as "I, the player, am just trying to turn you, the player, on." Depending on the situation, this can be totally awesome and appreciated -- or it can be super creepy or feel very manipulative.

I'm in the latter camp on that one, I'm afraid. If someone shoehorns a 'like' of mine they know about into a scene where it doesn't seem to make sense, or seems out of character for the characters involved? While I realize the other player is doing something they feel is being nice and they're making an effort and those things are appreciated... that's not why I'm writing those scenes (outside of Shang).

(I may genuinely be the weirdo on this. I know this.) I generally don't find TS (outside of specifically for jollies-getting on Shang) arousing. It may be interesting or challenging or insightful or funny[1] (or boring or oh-god-will-this-please-end or 'do they think that's arousing?' or any number of other things), so I'm just... writing. Like anything else, really. So it ends up being more or less super awkward.

[1] Please write more funny sex. Everyone. Everyone please write more funny sex. You will be so happy you did. Trust me on this if nothing else. Slip in the shower and bonk your head and growl and keep going. Make funny editorial commentary about your o-face. Hop around on one leg cussing like mad at your stompy boots because you can't get them off fast enough. There are endless options and even if just one of them happens it will add something to the scene (don't pile them on into a cavalcade of pratfalls obviously), and it will be a good and memorable thing. It doesn't have to be all the time, but for the love of all things holy, at least try it once if you haven't.

Because sex is funny. It is sometimes really goddamn funny. Too many people take every TS scene as the most srs of bzns. To which I just say this.

@Arkandel said in Tips on Güd TS:

While we're on the matter, how do you folks pick viable romantic partners for your characters?

I've gone a lot of directions on that one.

1. App in with someone as a pair.
2. Know someone on the game I trust to not be made of crazy and if the characters make sense, ask (or am asked myself).
3. (Most prevalent by far.) There's IC chemistry. If the player seems sane, it might be worth a shot. If the chemistry continues to develop in that direction and there are no OOC red flags, I'll run with it until there's a reason not to (OOC crazy surfaces, they vanish from the game, IC events separate the characters).

@Kanye-Qwest Agreed that what the community standards are is key.

"Liking sex" is, in fact, something that got a whole lot of shaming in the early days of previous forum incarnations, so it's actually a pretty good example to go with.

More specifically, admitting in public that you TS'ed? Doom, doom, doom in the early days of the forums -- we're going back to the late 90s and early 00s here.

This was silly in many respects because more people did it than didn't. It was treated like a 'dirty little secret', however, which meant a whole lot of people would decry it while typing one-handed in the next window over.

A handful of people admitted it. Me, @Ninjakitten, Peverel, @HelloRaptor, and a handful of others, but there really were only a handful of us. And the reputations we had at the time revolved heavily around that -- no matter what any of us were saying.

"Who should listen to you? You're just a stupid perv." <-- that kind of thing was incredibly common.

It was also stupid.

None of those people ever backed down, though. Nobody stopped admitting it. Nobody crawled off to die in a hole. None ever talked about it any differently then than is done now. People stood their ground because they were found nothing wrong with standing there, even when it wasn't comfortable.

Time passed. Shit changed. People grew up. (OK, most people grew up; there are still some folks stuck in the 90s on this one, but they're now as rare as the handful were back then.) You don't really see the hatefest toward anyone who considers TS as potentially a part of RP for whatever reason in the same way.

Sometimes the behavior being shamed is stupid. Sometimes it's the shaming itself that is the behavior that is actually stupid.

Recently, the major public outcry around here has been "don't use slur language and pretend it's cute or OK, it makes you an asshole".

I think the community is pretty much on the right course, frankly.

@Swaggot Leaving because someone is told no is actually one of the most sensible and stress-free 'not ideal' scenarios, really.

People scream and hurl invective for hours -- or sometimes hours at a time over a period of months -- at the staffer or everyone in sight. People decide to try to monkeywrench the game for anyone there. People start crazy conspiracy theories and rumors, or spread outright lies until the OOC atmosphere starts to go toxic.

I'd take someone leaving over a 'no' over any of those any day, truth be told.

@Haven Really, this thread is a pretty good primer for staffing. Sooner or later, you will get someone so in love with their idea that the very notion of changing from a verb form to a noun form of their character's secret clubhouse name means that you're castrating their concept for being too interesting.

And thus is the life of a staffer, in a nutshell.

Be prepared.

I handled his app when Firan went poof and he was migrating to TR.

As chirpy overworked OMG HOW MANY APPS ARE IN THE QUEUE?! admin lass at the time, you would think not a thing in the world could possibly stand out because there were a pile of people totally new to the system to help out, and set up.

Dude stood out.

Boy, did he ever. While pretty much everyone else was grateful for the help, eager to learn, and otherwise open to listening to what they needed to look for/set up (which I was usually happy to do for people), he was... special.

He'd made a character that was born amidst a number of cold war conflicts, I forget if it was in Eastern Europe or Western Russia -- either way, he had a (for TR) medium length BG going on about what he was doing throughout that time.

And then he asked for help with it, and if it was all right. I read it over, said it looked fine, it was already more than most people write by a large margin so he didn't need to worry about the length.

At which point he tells me I should be grateful and thank him for the history lesson I got while reading it, shouldn't I.

Excuse me?

I was alive then. I am an old cow. I was in the latter half of high school when the wall came down, grew up during the Cold War, and was old enough to be well aware of the news, politics, and the state of hostilities at the time. One of my gaming buds was a low level US Army intel guy at a listening post out there back then and we've all heard the stories he's told us (the ones he's allowed to pass along, obvs) who managed to hear a thing to make sure he got leave to be there on site when that shit happened, because that was going to be the party to end all parties for anyone in his age range especially, being in his mid-20s at the time. Fuck, I've even been to a handful of the actual places in Russia and Eastern Europe he listed in the background RL.

If this pompous little bitchboy thought he was schooling me on anything, he had another think coming. The phrasing was incredibly insulting and condescending; it was pretty glaring as a bullshit negging-style attempt to assert dominance over what he must have considered a 'friendly and helpful must mean stupid' female staffer -- and this was just 2 or 3 years ago.

He got a very polite but firm, "I am well aware of the history described in your background, having been alive and old enough at the time to understand the situation."

So there's a more current warning, y'all.

I know I'm working on something, which is something I swore I would never, ever do again.

I'm even almost figuring out minor bits of code to make things work, for which I owe @Thenomain a big thanks, due to the stuff he's assembled that makes it easier to learn by observing simply how things are working, and answering questions when there are any.

Wiki-fu prettiness for character pages is one thing. Wiki-fu setup and customization... whole different animal. @Bobotron offered invaluable help there, too.

Between those two things alone, I've learned one hell of a lot -- and while the project may never be more than a pile of practice and puttering, that never ever has eroded considerably. That's really sorta... huge, even if it doesn't sound like much.

In part, I think this forum helped kick off the real sea change. The open exchange of information is, in itself, huge. While web sites have been around for ages with info on them, the interactivity factor for Q&A alone makes a world of difference.

I see a pretty marked difference between MSB and WORA.

People still argue here, and play devil's advocate plenty -- but rarely is there the constant trolling amongst regular posters occur that was fairly prevalent on WORA (in all of its incarnations) and SWOFA that made it nigh impossible to actually have a productive discussion about anything.

Many games never even make it on the radar here, but the ones that do, one way or another, tend to have their dirty laundry aired if there actually are soiled knickers scattered about the joint. It's entirely possible that the games no one ever mentions here have plenty that reekingly remain, but if there's something sketchy going on, it will often come to light here.

That's both good and bad. I think some of the worst breed of staffers are less likely to attempt to get away with shady garbage because of the fear of exposure. Fortunately, that means that the old-school worst abuses are much more rare today than they once were.

Unfortunately, that means that a lot of minor stuff, or stuff people just worry that maybe it could happen (not even could be happening but just could happen) gets elevated to the same level of hysteria that would erupt over things like staff banning somebody for turning them down for TS, or a staffer setting their husband's PC's stats to godlike levels for no reason, and so on. The closest I think we've seen to the kind of old-school horrors that raised the alarm are Elsa's email stalker campaign with channel meltdowns and Spider's illustrious career on TR and FC.

Even suspicion seems to be enough to condemn someone lately, and I'm not so sure I'm keen on that. Considering most people are aware of this, ironically enough it makes it a lot harder to find quality staffers, because you have folks now terrified to make even the slightest innocent minor and easily remedied mistake lest they be crucified as an eater of babies and kitten rapist -- and doing the damage control (which almost never works anyway) required to even attempt to correct the impression is enormously time-consuming, and usually futile.

That worries me. It can't not worry me, because in that way I see that there's real damage being done to the hobby. There's so much talent here in this community, but plenty of people are (quite understandably) not at all willing to do things because it's like painting a target on their face, ass, and heart all at once.

Do I think this is balanced out by the ability to impartially review ideas and concepts, or call out real major abuses and the like? Yeah. I do think the over-reaction stuff needs to slow its roll some, however, for this place to be as productive as it could be.

I don't care where the exchange happens, if it is related to the game and involves participants being abusive, I would take it seriously.

"I made sure to contain all of my stalking to skype!"
"I only discussed my plan to cheat in email!"
"All I did was rally a mob to hunt down my OOC rival on the forums with lies about what they were doing!"
"I was only harassing them in gchat, not on the game itself!"
"I just defaced their wiki, it's not like I did anything to their PC!"

^ If anybody considers the above something that means their behavior is suddenly peachy keen because it happened off the MUX/MUSH/MUCK/MOO/Evennia/etc., a heavy duty reality check is in order.

Evidence is obviously still required, but change of venue is NOT a defense.

@faraday Heck, if the jerk behavior actually was confined to the HP, we'd be in a much better place than we are, and it really needs to be for the model to work.

Sadly, it's not.

Some folks genuinely give none fucks about that rule, or think they're above it, or... fuck-knows-what. That is really just not even a little bit OK with me, and if there's anything that I wish got more attention when it happens, it's that.

@faraday I don't think anybody should listen to them, for exactly the reasons you're describing, and @Three-Eyed-Crow is as well.

It's just exhausting to hear people who cry out for innovation in one breath, then insist no one should try something new 'because some people don't want to learn a new thing' in the next. It's essentially demanding the impossible, and is an internal contradiction.

'Some people won't' is a given with anything, and that is OK -- it is regardless of the thing they won't do, really. By extension, though, 'some people won't' isn't a reason for some other people to do it. Some people won't play scifi -- is that a reason to not make scifi games? Hell no! And so on. Any choice made is going to have 'some people who won't' based on that choice, even choices that are entirely neutral in one direction or the other (consent vs. non-consent, PvE vs. PvP, etc.).

I'm a little perplexed by the 'this is only coming up since a new game was announced' commentary. The Miami project has been discussed on MSB (and presumably on FC) for months now, long before this thread existed; this is hardly its first mention, and it doesn't seem like anyone's rushing to compete with another game. I know I've chatted with a variety of people in threads and in PMs about it over the past few months; pretty sure I wasn't hallucinating that.

(I did, sadly, drop the ball on getting random pics as I hoped if there was anything interesting, because I suck, and more or less slept too much. Other than a 'What In The Actual Fuck/Only In Florida' shot of the runways for the Fort Lauderdale airport, which are a highway overpass in places. <cue terrified scream here> Not sure how useful that will be to anyone... )

@bored said in Hello MSBites! Grade your administrators.:

There are posts in this thread suggesting that basically the entire forum (with the exception of the Pit, should it be allowed to exist) should operate at a very polite / moderated level. It has also been part of the longer discussion about moderation that goes beyond this thread.

That's... actually been my understanding of how things are supposed to be from the moment the Pit was created. Vitriol was to be confined there. Personal attacks were to be confined there. They haven't been... like, at all.

Again, I really don't care how its organized. But its important to clarify that 'highly moderated discussion with almost no criticism' (which seems to be your / @surreality's / etc's preference, and don't think is bad, to be very clear) is very different from 'criticism OK but no flaming' which is different from 'poo and gifs.' Everyone can have all these things, as far as I'm concerned, but we should be cautious of any of them being removed or diminished.

It's possible to offer constructive criticism, and that's what I think people are talking about. There's a difference between 'this is just a pile of shit' (which people still do) as criticism and 'the way they have the economy set up is unbalanced and makes the game hard to play, and the staff pressure to engage in TS is pretty creepy to me' which is not exactly light or gentle criticism. The latter contains useful information that the poster can ostensibly substantiate, the former really doesn't. It's just a slap from out of nowhere for no stated reason.