@dontpanda The reverse happens a lot, too. "You just hate me because I'm <discriminated against group>!!!"
No, I think (generic) you are being a jackass because you're behaving like a jackass, and doubly so because you're trying to use 'I am discriminated against in life!' as a shield for crappy behavior that has nothing to do with <reason that person might be actively discriminated against by any reasonable measure>.
‘Old ads’ for games that have closed is a good call.
I would recommend a ‘Games in Dev’ section. Currently, they seem to end up scattered somewhat; keeping them in a home of their own may help with both focus and to corral wayward threads.
@nymeria None of us are especially great at it, truth be told. These projects mean something to the people who've put a ton of time and effort into them; it's hard to not take it personally. There are moments when I've read this forum and thought, "That is literally the opposite of what actually happened/I just wrote/etc.!" and they are legitimately crazy-making.
The only personal stuff there is is... well, what was mentioned. Ideally, it hasn't escaped people's attention that you haven't acted here like you did years ago on WORA. (As much as people like to chow down on popcorn when somebody goes overboard, I know I'm certainly happier when people seem to get more chill and generally mellow over time, no matter who it is.)
Put it this way: your game has been around for ages now. Most don't last more than a year or two. It's still going, things are still happening, people are still there. So somebody is clearly enjoying the place and what you're doing. That's a win, and it counts.
In some respects, I don't envy the position you're in. You and Balerion are pretty much the experts on the subject, and most players aren't necessarily going to know all the details you do, which is probably frustrating. (I can empathize somewhat, being a fan of creating original worlds; I'll know more about it than I will ever think to write down.) Some stuff y'all know that may make something a 'yes' or a 'no' may be correct to the world -- but would be spoilers to the whole planet -- if explained to the level of detail most players expect when told 'no' about something, too. I know I wouldn't want that kind of pressure, that's for sure.
@faraday That, yep.
There's also the huge difference between "I don't like <thing> about this game," which is also totally chill as a stated opinion, and "this game is <thing> and that makes them completely stupid and everyone who likes that is also stupid."
(This gets back to the One True Way-ists thing somewhat, but also hits on the whole 'wishlisting' problem, where a lot of people want something that will conform to what they personally want... and if that's the only way they can be happy, they probably need to make their own game and not try to force other people to make an existing project conform to their personal wish list.)
ETA: Dammit, @faraday, your edit makes me wish I could upvote something twice again. 
@Arkandel said:
Woke up with no internet connection. It's like the light has gone out of the world. The ISP's tier 1 support (good people otherwise) insisted the problem was with my ethernet cables (both of them?) until I pointed out the cable modem's error logs.
So now I'm at work, thinking tonight is gonna suck. Hopefully they won't need to mail me a new modem.
Check to make sure no one accidentally chainsawed the cable line.
Me: "I think the guy accidentally cut the cable line, guys."
Everyone else: "That seriously cannot be it, you are an idiot, allow us to come up with 20 different ways that this is completely impossible."
Me: tech support forever
Tech Support: "There's a problem with the line, we'll send somebody out."
Tech: "Looks like somebody cut the cable out here... "
Everyone else: "Would you believe it, when the guy was cutting the ivy, he chainsawed the cable!"
Me: 
I speak from recent experience. 
First off, it’s weirdly refreshing to see someone Who would rather err on the side of caution rather than just diving in to something* with none fucks given regarding whatever theme, setting, or canon is involved, @Collective. I think you’re probably being overly cautious in this case, but I want to point out what you’ve described as being worthy of whatever sort of awesome points there are for two reasons: first being the ‘you care about how your characters may impact the game reality’ thing — which not everyone does, and it can get hugely problematic — and second being the way you describe handling it: disclose, ask, discuss. In other words, acting like an actual mature adult with respect for those around them.
It’s a damnable shame anyone has to over a question of IC sexuality to me, since I have to say I’m with @ixokai on this one 100% here, but this does not diminish the level of ‘damn, it’s refreshing to see someone ask about these things because they give a damn’.
I mean this in the broadest sense, too — be it canon characters (I would include roster characters on a game with them in the same category here) or setting elements or IC history— man, I wish more people asked about stuff. Not just to avoid stepping into an expectations bear trap of some kind, either, but because whatever that element is someone is asking about when apping a character or doing something new with an existing one, it gives the folks being asked (presumably staff) the chance to hook them up with more info they might have, more options they know of that might not be readily apparent to a new player that are opened up because of the thing they want to do differently, etc. I loved giving people info like this to run with whenever I staffed; it’s admittedly less relevant with this specific example, but the general premise holds.
Essentially, there’s a lot of active support that staff can generally toss a player’s way, the more they know, to help the person hit the ground running. That this chance is often lost is more wince-worthy to me than people plowing ahead with something that for whatever reason really doesn’t work and potentially getting someone’s knickers in a knot over it. That so many staffers throw away that chance (without some circumstance like being so overworked there’s just no time) is even more bleah.
I think @Gingerlily has a very good point here.
The way this went -- at least initially -- is more or less how other advertisements on this board go.
I'm pretty sure if I ever get to the point where I post an ad for the project I'm working on, it's going to get bitched about/at to high heaven because it's impressively niche.
But that's kinda just because that's how things go around here. It's actually not remotely personal.
@ganymede said in Hello MSBites! Grade your administrators.:
There are people here that have, in my opinion, gone on crusades against others to assassinate their reputation on a board with little or no accountability.
This is absolutely the case. It has some nuance to it, however, and that's important to recognize.
Some people are acting out of hate and sheer mean-spiritedness. Those examples are rare and often obvious. They still do damage, and as it stands, that damage is permitted to stand, even if it is a full-on campaign of slander and outright lies.
That is not and should never be OK. I'm not talking about matters of opinion, here. I may think someone is acting like an ass and say so; someone else may disagree and say that as well, and frankly, that's fine, and should remain fine. That's a difference of opinion.
We have seen things that aren't differences of opinion stated as wholly unsupported fact about others. We've seen people accused of concrete actions without evidence, and those accusations stand without challenge. Whether someone speaks up to say 'that isn't true' or not, if that person is not in the board gossip circle, they are frankly fucked nine times out of ten.
And maybe let's stop pretending that isn't happening, too? That there isn't a group of people 'in the know' that are communicating broadly outside the board about any given issue, and then when it comes to the board, those not in that rumor mill are completely at a loss about what the hell is going on? Because it's obvious. The evidence is everywhere. Someone speaks up and gets a chorus of 'we all know what you did!' while the rest of the board is left scratching their heads and trying to figure out what the actual problem is.
Go back to ye olde Internet Drama and You and look at the description of the commiseration spiral. It's textbook. Practically the entire gripes and peeves thread looks like this now in the chorus of vaguebooking posts and responses to them, save for the old saws we have been banging on about -- pose length, idle times, purple prose, etc. -- for an actual generation now.
This starts to cross the line into the 'accusation without evidence' territory as well. And don't think I don't understand how it comes about; it is right there. There is usually something that spawns it, but that something is only known to a select few -- and the rest of us get our heads torn the hell off for commenting objectively on what is actually being presented here, which does not include that, often with substantial attacks on anyone who comments. That's utter bullshit, y'all. Wake up to it.
We could shove all of the mean-spirited jibes and personal insults into the closet, and we could tell everyone "hey, it's okay to be shitty in the closet, but be nice out here because the folks that cannot or unable to defend themselves will surely not be affected by whatever vomit you spew in there," but we all know -- we all should know -- that this is not the case.
I agree with this to a point, but only to a point. Were it not for the circumstance described above re: glaringly obvious outside commiseration spiral going on somewhere that often leads to piling on and wild accusations, it would be a lot easier for people to speak up for themselves. As it stands, the same circles jerk each other off over the subject and behave as though whoever is commenting has access to all the information they do, rather than the information that has been brought here and presented here. And at that point, it has been brought here, so people are going to comment. If you're going to rip someone's head off for commenting 'because they don't have the whole story', you better be prepared to deliver it rather than casting aspersions on them or making wild-ass claims about how they're terrible fucking people in some way or another for reacting based on the information available to them.
And this feeds into the same circle jerk, which by now would put the yiff-flood from College Humor's 'Furry Force pt. 3' to shame for the amount of... what it releases into the community. (Which I'm not linking, you can look it up on youtube when you're not at work.) Those wild-ass claims and nasty assumptions get discussed and tossed around and treated like fact because -- hey, same thing -- there's nobody there to disagree, no one there to offer up actual facts to contradict them, etc.
People here are for the most part very capable of defending themselves from unreasonable attacks when they are not a tidal wave of circle jerk yiff jizz, which is increasingly the case. This isn't weakness. This isn't dodging a bullet. People can dodge metaphorical bullets; this is like shrapnel grenade launchers.
The problem is that, like Fight Club, expecting no consequences from that is foolish, and the sheep are understandably anxious.
I wouldn't call anyone here a sheep, unless directed toward those 'blindly following whoever barks the loudest'. Many of the people who have been voicing concerns have been in this community since its beginning, have survived a hell of a lot of shit-slinging and awfulness, and are still here speaking up about things they think are important, still calling bullshit where they think it's warranted, and voicing views broadly accepted now that were outliers back when without backing down an inch. They are anything but sheep.
I agree about the matter of consequences. I have certainly pissed off more than a few people here over the years for things I have actually said or done; I don't think ill of them for being pissed off at me for it if they are. That's up to them. Making up a lot of gross bullshit to pile on top of that to bully, threaten, and try to frighten, hurt, or shame someone into silence is something else entirely.
Everybody here probably has some fuckup or another they're ashamed of, regret, etc. For the most part, people own that. Making up things out of whole cloth -- supported only by gossip circle speculation reinforcing itself -- and trying to force those labels on someone is different. Just because someone could gather up a dozen people to say, "Bob fucks camels on the weekends" doesn't mean Bob needs to own fucking camels on the weekends if he doesn't fuck camels on the weekends, and we're seeing a lot of that pattern of late. It's a problem.
How to address it? I have no idea. Policing things that happen off board is not only not possible, it's just not something the mods should be asked to even attempt. 'Back your shit up before you throw it' being called out, though, regardless of where it's happening on the board, is something we should all be getting better at calling out, because it's something that is not happening enough to even slow the roll of this behavior, which only seems to be gaining momentum rather than being recognized as the problem it is.
Dear dentist: when I ask you, "What is this the total comprehensive cost of what you are proposing going to be?"
And you tell me $28k, giving me an on the spot panic attack already with that shit, and go on with examples of how 'if we bought a $28k car it wouldn't allow as much time to pay off' and similar?
Don't you fucking dare come back to me and say, "oops, I meant for each row, so it's actually $56k total," after we go see the guy you recommended for the consult.
Holy motherfucking fuck you, man.
This is one I've given a lot of thought, because this one has more layers than an onion.
First, I like @Collective's approach to this: ask the players, and see what they want to do. This is ideal for tabletop. It's less so for MUX due to a combination of a much larger player pool and not even knowing who those players are going to be at any given time, but it can be adapted at least to some extent. I know that's the approach I was trying to take with it in regard to a historical setting. (I got a lot of hate for how I wanted to handle it specifically, but if I pick up that project again, it's still how I aim to handle it.)
This is how I looked at it:
No matter what else is decided, these things have no place whatsoever in the OOC atmosphere of a game, ever. Not even as a 'joke'.
People have different answers to the question posed, regarding how much or how little they want to address this.
2a. All players involved must have a respectful attitude toward other players on the game (which is covered above in regard to RL), but also toward other players' fun, unless it crosses into wrongfun territory.
2b. I do not believe an interest in exploring these themes automatically indicates the player embraces these views RL. (Some do believe this, and some players do embrace these views. I don't believe either of these things are a healthy approach in general to creating any sort of positive environment, on a game or off.)
2c. Some people are intrigued by the idea of combatting these views directly IC rather than indulging in them as an aggressor. They want to be the woman who overcomes discrimination and takes on her own crew by virtue of unquestionable badassery. They want to be in the Underground Railroad. They want to be the character who succeeds and thrives in spite of these challenges, and consider this heroic and life-affirming. In my experience, these players are more common than those who want to play antagonists focused on these themes, or characters with these traits. Without this conflict existing in the game world itself, these character types are excluded from the list of possibilities along with the antagonists. Similarly, there's already examples in thread of people coming into play with these views, and having them evolve and change and grow out of them as part of their character's story arc. If the player characters in a world are the exceptional individuals in that world by default, I don't think these exceptions are unreasonable.
I do believe there are certain forms of 'wrongfun'. With one major exception, these are all OOC forms of 'fun'. (The one exception to this for me is acting out child sex, whether it exists in the world or not. I define this as 'below 16'. YMMV in any number of directions, you do you.) This is generally stuff like trolling, stat bullying, playing head games with other players, trying to strong-arm other players into things they find uncomfortable they have no interest in engaging with, and so on. For some players, these are big reasons to be on a game and are major sources of their 'fun'. It's important to note that these things are not Character vs. Character competitions or actions, they are Player vs. Player interactions in the truest sense. I believe that a MUX (or MOO, or Evennia game, etc.) should be Player with Player, whatever the Character vs. <X> focus(es) of the game intend to be. Settings that incorporate heavy themes of discrimination, bigotry, or bias (in the way most historical settings may have to consider these subjects) must recognize their inclusion offers the players with these OOC wrongfun attitudes a number of means of engaging in the OOC wrongfun behaviors than modern settings in which they would encounter more pushback IC, even if they behave wholly in line with point #1 above in their OOC interactions with fellow players. (And most will, at least on the surface.)
I believe this means additional measures must be taken to ensure these themes, if they are included, are clearly noted as opt-in.
4a. There's no opt-in to these things existing in the larger world of the game, whether the player has opted-in to personally encountering it or the direct fallout from it or not. They do exist in the world, just as horrible things exist in the world today that most of us would gladly erase from existence given the choice. It doesn't mean we have necessarily encountered them or their direct fallout, or ever will, and this approach can be extended to the game environment. I try to use myself as an example for these things usually, but I have really bad luck, y'all, so I'm going to use an extreme example here: There are child soldiers in the world subjected to unimaginable cruelty and brainwashing; this exists. It absolutely exists. I have never encountered it save for on the evening news or as characters in fiction. Odds are high I will never encounter it, though it is inescapable in other parts of the world. It is extremely unlikely this or the direct fallout from this (investigation of, encountering the victim of) will ever surface in my direct experience. This can be translated to the game world in a variety of ways.
4b. No player should ever, ever be forced to have these views IC. This goes both ways; "You're supposed to hate me because I'm <X>!" is just as horrid as "I don't want my play experience to be dominated by people hating me because I'm <X>!" and 'forcing hate' is also something I do not consider OK to ask of someone to take on if they don't want to engage with these themes.
4c. Provided that players keep in mind that these things do exist in the broader game world, I do not think 'it's all exceptions on grid as PCs!' does so much harm to that game world's 'accuracy' that it renders it invalid enough that 'you may as well just rewrite it all'. (I'm way too into cause and effect for that, and all of these things are enormously impactful on society and the way a world takes shape in broader terms.)
I set up a preference system for this on the MUX. People could express their comfort zones regarding this material (and various other subjects) to make their personal wishes known. This allows for those interested in exploring it to find one another, those who wished to avoid it to find one another, and each to see the other's preference and communicate with one another directly from there to see how to handle any given interaction. Sometimes, the answer will end up being 'don't interact'. Usually, there will be some measure of compromise, or some give and take, because most players are not assholes and genuinely care about whether everyone is enjoying themselves or not. This also let people set things up on a per-PC basis; if someone has a limited tolerance for this subject, they may have one character that gets logged in once in a blue moon that's opted in to it, and the rest that aren't. It also allows people to define their personal comfort zones and specifics. For instance, I may not care about sexist profanity being slung at my character, but I may not be down with being treated as a husband's property, and someone else may be completely the opposite -- which is why giving people the space to speak personally about their own interests (or their complete lack of interest) in as little or as much detail as they wish.
Plenty of people think this is the dumbest 'solution' ever, or that it's more problem than solution. I don't. I still aim to try it if I ever get back on that project.
I would still really like to see a WoD game set in the late 80s through mid-90s -- any time in that range. (Edit: The TV series 'Wicked City', for instance, strikes me as having an amazing setting for a WoD game.)
It isn't so distant as to be incomprehensible to most, but many of the changes would have a profound impact. The lack of mobile tech, and the difference in the state of average consumer tech, has the potential to make a considerable difference entirely on its own.
@Pandora The more I hear, the more I am convinced your daughter is going to grow up to rule the world. I approve of this in every possible way.
@carnivale The thing about apologies -- this applies to even the most sincere and heartfelt ones, and I'm not saying anything about whether this is that or not -- is that you can't force someone to accept them.
Don't get me wrong; even an insincere apology -- and I am not saying this is that, either -- that entails describing what one did wrong in such detail is difficult and awkward.
That doesn't make any difference at all regarding the above; you can't demand someone accept it.
All you can do, at that point, if you are sincerely remorseful, is quietly change the pattern of behavior that caused harm, and hope it makes a difference. Even difficult words are ultimately cheap. Action is less so, but dancing around and pointing to how much you've changed because you want something -- be it attention, kudos, or even forgiveness -- isn't the kind of action that is required.
Change is expensive, but a positive change will typically pay you back in earnest. It may not be in the currency you're expecting, or from the things you want, but it will.
As a bystander here, it looks like there's a lot that was left out of the story here that actually matters to a lot of people who were directly impacted by what was disclosed, and a lot of things that weren't. I'm not going to criticize any of the posters here for relating their experiences, no matter what other roles they may have on the board or on any given game.
General thing: if you don't want to receive PMs from someone, if you click on their user icon and go to their user page, there is an 'ignore chats from' option on one of the dropdowns. (On the dark layout I use, it's on the blue circle with the line of three vertical dots off to the right on the user page. Ignore posts is there, too.) I stumbled across this a ways back and it's less known than the 'click on the little eye thingie on the posts' method of ignoring posts, and the ignore PMs option is I think only accessible there.
@Arkandel said:
if someone who can simply afford to play a few hours every day can outpace people who can't, then some people would be alienated by that.
It would be a mistake in most cases to reward people with no lives to the detriment of the rest.
It's worth mention: there seem to be quite a few people who can spend plenty of time on a game daily or nearly so, and in some cases beyond a few hours, who have pretty active lives. Usually, it's somebody who can get online from work -- someone who is more a lucky bastard in some respects than they are a 'no lifer'.
I'm seeing the belief that regular presence on a game == no life recur a little more often than I think is wise to continue to foster as a universal truism.
Having a life usually involves multiple hobbies; in a few of them I've seen the you're not a real <hobbyist> if you don't... mentality, which is equally damaging.
By the same token, to take a simple example: I knit, but if I don't spend time knitting that week, my project is going to sit there not progressing, because socks don't knit themselves. Characters don't play themselves, either. So while "I can't be around all the time, and I don't want to fall too far behind" is a reasonable concern, once the idea that people who take issue with that are suggested to be 'no lifers' gets attached, it pretty ugly. It gets uglier when the suggestion that people not be able to benefit from their activity and contributions any more than someone who may be making absolutely none by eliminating any advancement benefits for activity -- because that's some pretty impressively entitled nonsense right there, and does devalue the contributions people make to the game. (It's also a recipe for a complete dino crisis, which leads to stagnation even faster.)
Balance between the two is pretty key.
While I agree with the 'play is its own reward' concept in theory, that's in theory. In practice it doesn't always work out that way. People show up to a plot you run that drive you bonkers, somebody needs the most boring PrP run ever but you have a few hours to spare and they're desperate to find somebody -- there are times the dangled reward carrot helps and is of benefit to the game in ways that, IMHO, don't compare to having someone who may log in once a month for two hours to play with the same one or two people each time not discouraged from continuing to do so. For that person, the 'play is its own reward' thinking seems to be more apt, since they're not making sacrifices of their game time (however much of it they may have compared to others) in the way those described above do.
...the early 'therapy' was pretty much awful. This is that 'back when' section that, uh, Gany, please skip this?
I saw an audiologist for years, starting in first grade. This was a day a week (or every two weeks) when I'd go into a tiny soundproof room for an hour, with giant heavy-ass headphones plunked on my wee noggin, and they'd play special recordings made of multiple conversations all layered over one another. I would either have to write down something dictated to me over a loudspeaker sent into the room, if the audiologist was in the booth section, or answer questions on a timer to her when she was in the room to ask them. I have a fucked up combination of 'very sensitive hearing' and 'an inability to filter background noise', so they thought. Well, I do have pretty damned sensitive hearing, but the 'inability to filter background noise' is one of those things that's related to ADD. Whee, right? All of this was to 'train my brain' to filter the background noise, and that was not going to happen. Did anybody explain this to me as a kid? Nope. All I knew as a kid was that I was going into a little white padded room, having noise blared into my ears, while a stranger asked me to take notes and answer questions on a timer. Want to confuse the shit out of a kid? Try this. (No, really, don't. Ever.) Still hate crowds. Hate them. Too much of it and it's right back to the white closet with the vinyl-padded headphones from hell in my head. No thanks!
Since hyperactivity wasn't a factor for me, and the 'can ADD exist without hyperactivity?' was a ping-pong match at the time, and my hearing was trippy (vision, too), they tried 'hypersensitivity'. I am super sensitive to light/color and loud noises, so they weren't completely wrong there, but it wasn't the issue. Treatment for hypersensitivity is varied, and in addition to the above, there was a lot of physical stuff, most of which involved sitting on a mat (looking just as confused) as a therapist poked me with everything from feathers to those little needle-wheel things. (Pattern drafting class was surreal to a fault, y'all.) Again, no explanation, beyond, "We don't want you to flinch when your parents hug you!" Well, again, maybe just don't touch people who don't want to be touched? How is this not a complete answer?
I think I was dangled off of, spun on, swung on, swung from, bent, spindled, and confused on every weird object in that gym-like room. I won't pretend that some of it wasn't kinda fun, because they had neat weird swing things and I liked swinging and spinning as a kid. (To this day, if I'm stressed, I will still spin the chair back and forth some.)
About once a month, there were puzzles of all sorts, and testing that I'd have to ask about to even guess at its purpose.
There's a fairly fucked up situation this all creates, in combination with what's mentioned previously: this isn't helping, it's scary, and there's no one who will help. They probably won't even listen. This is a fucked up thing to come to understand by the end of first grade, especially when you see the same pattern repeat itself endlessly. The end result is this: there was no place, and no person, that was 'safe'. No one, and nowhere. Help was not coming, even if there were people there who earnestly believed they were helping and trying to help. (Then, you're just ungrateful, too.)
There's a reason I say listening is so important. Really listening. 'Ignore everything the kid says and plow along no matter what while keeping the kid completely in the dark' doesn't work, no matter how smart you are, or how smart the people making suggestions are.
A person is not the right place for the 'throw everything at the wall and see what sticks' approach. You can demolish a wall and start over if you have to. It doesn't work that way with people.
@arkandel Bonus points under the heading of 'all the sigh in the world': when said white hat murder party does things to the 'bad guy' that are ten times worse than anything the bad guy ever did, which is pretty common.
@Wizz said:
Really though, my main question is this:
At what point did "gonzo" weirdness come into the equation at Eldritch? I'm not saying
Please no, but it seems kind of a strange fit for WoD, where the mood is always a bit dark.
I don't know about Eldritch, but Reno has tried it with some success. I'm not sure if that's the same intention/direction, but anyone I've heard talk about it had positive experiences.
I don't talk to a heck of a lot of people, admittedly, but the once-in-a-while round of 'what on earth is that... ' with a bit of humor rolled in, even if it's humor on the OOC level for the players to enjoy while the characters are freaking right out, is something I've admittedly always found pretty entertaining and engaging on any given game. I tend to think of it this way: sometimes a little amusing weirdness can provide more depth to the dark, and keep things from getting a little too heavy on the OOC front.
I should be taken with a grain of salt on this front, though: I love some level humor in RP generally, no matter what the subject matter is. Every so often, a round of beer&pretzels-style 'wanna go blast the crap out of a bunch of zombie sorority girls?' is good for dispelling a case of my grumpy-cat-face, pretty much.
La la la, here is random useless text, it's useless text, la la la. Spoiler tag ahoy!
***I can't even with the spoiler tags but here we are.***
@miss-demeanor said in Regarding administration on MSB:
You aren't the only one that sees the not-so-subtle correlations between staffers who are acting in ways that they would ban people for on their own games. Its being noted with high amusement.
Consider this thirded emphatically.
General note: it's seriously annoying to see the board explode in a fit every time the mods do something, and it does. It's almost always the same handful of people complaining, and honestly, at this point, I wish they'd make their own forum, moderated in their preferred fashion, rather than dragging this one into the proverbial toilet of 'argue about every single mod action for pages on end'.
The staff/games parallel is not remotely off-base.
MSB the forum is now treating MSB the forum as it would a game on MSB the forum, and there is a point at which things become meta to the point of sheer absurdity. We passed that point weeks ago.
As a suggestion from someone who was considering playing there, it's worth noting that at least in terms of the show, even the assholes tended to know they needed to get over themselves long enough to get things done once in a while. They might have been making bad decisions, or being grumbling grudging jerks whilst doing so, but they did, on the whole, seem to realize, "Hey, we're going to starve to death/die after a raid/etc. unless we stop arguing with each other long enough to actually do something about the problem."
One of the other notable things in the source material is, unfortunately, that yes, there are indeed a lot of people so invested in being irresponsible dicks that Protagonist/AntiHero/PersonWithTheClueAtTheMoment has to strike out on their own and Do The Thing That Needs Doing because not even a cattle prod to the nethers will get everyone else on board/out of bed/over themselves long enough to get it done. This is hard in a MUX environment, which is why I dub it 'unfortunate'. Players want in on things, which is good -- but that's not, actually, how things are always handled in the source material, because of the kind of characters present.
This means the balancing act for a collaborative environment here is going to be a little harder than it would be for a screenwriter; it's basically just something to keep in mind. Basically, you'll want to either add in some support (if it isn't present already and I'm not going to assume either way on this front) for people striking out on their own in this way To Do The Thing, and/or more collaboration to allow for more inclusion needs to be encouraged OOCly.