Best posts made by surreality

While I think the original question might more be related to 'what level of info provided would y'all be comfortable with providing since we keep getting repeat trolls creating accounts constantly up in here', this is worth looking at.

@ghost said in What's your identity worth to you?:

• Are IP addresses stored, and if so how long?

Not sure. I don't actually think it necessarily expires from the MUX on its own. If it does, it may be 'after X number of IP slots have been used by that person' more than a factor of removal over time. As in, it stores ten, once you get the 11th, the first drops off, whether that's in two hours or twenty years. (I genuinely don't know, but there seem to be a few things in MUX that work this way.)

Similarly unsure regarding the wiki. (Since most games have both, it's worth looking at what the standard mediawiki install does with the same info.)

• Does stored IP information get scrubbed?

Probably not, unless it's by one of the methods above. Every so often, Shang purges theirs by some metric or another, since they use theirs for alt-tracking/ensuring people remain within alt limits. I think it's every year or two, but I believe it's manual/a script they run, not an automated background process.

• For games that require registration with an email address, does that email get scrubbed when the PC bit is destroyed?

There are a lot of moving parts to this one -- mostly because so many games don't destroy bits any more, they freeze them so the player can return later if they wish, without data loss re: sheet/etc.

Personally, I wouldn't.

Players who leave voluntarily should be permitted to return, and this is a simple way of verifying that Returning Bob and Original Bob are the same person. (Not Person Stalking Original Bob finds out Bob had an alt there and wants to thaw Bob's character to see who approaches Bob to chat, and about what. Having had someone spoof one of my characters in such a fashion before on a game that did destroy bits... yeah, this can and does happen.)

Players who have been removed should stay gone. Again, while there's a lot of workarounds for this, keeping forbidden IPs and 'Banned User Email List' is a very simple check on this. Most people will just use a VPN or new email, but a surprising number don't.

@thenomain This is actually part of why I'm keen on that approach, actually. There's some things -- using the lock example again -- that could be generating more staff work and complaints if someone, for instance, complains that someone told them to get the heck out of their bedroom and they'd assumed they could just wander in there because there's no coded lock, too.

@Arkandel You pretty much nailed one of the other things that I actually write down, because people will absolutely insist that because there wasn't a rule about their uniquely concocted asshattery, they can't be punished. (Generally, they will already have a reason this is not asshattery, whether they're playing innocent or are actually genuinely clueless, and that it's the other person who is not 'being an adult' because they're objecting to the behavior.) That's the 'if new policy has to go into place because of something you did, it was either horrible enough we never thought anyone would think it's OK to be that big an asshole without penalty, or it was a genuine blind spot no one realized would cause a problem before now'. The latter is massively rare, and it's usually easy to spot the difference.

Back on TR, the Firan flood brought in some folks totally unaccustomed to the different culture on the game. There was a player that, gods help me, she was the bane of my existence because she was genuinely clueless, and not deliberately obtuse, but she had no understanding of the cultural norms of the game and was very aggressive if they were pointed out to her by fellow players. This understandably caused immediate conflict and escalation that never needed to happen.

For instance, she believed that it was entirely kosher to wander into any of the occupied temp rooms without invitation, or a word at all OOC, and just plunk down and observe total strangers RPing as passive entertainment for herself. This actually is a thing in some places, and again. Some of it has to do with coded locks, but part of it has to do with the culture of passive observation being allowed. This sounds completely bonkers to a lot of people not familiar with it until you consider how many of us have run into an RP buddy 'just parking in the group hangout to watch the IC goings on of their RP circle and maybe chat a little OOC with buddies' while at work, or 'I'll pop in and if I'm able to pose in I will but I may just hang out and maybe chat today if things are busy', which, to the outside observer or new player, looks like 'sure, obviously, hanging out and just watching people play is allowed, that guy's doing it!' (without realizing there's any understanding amongst those players, or plans to pose in later, or that they had to leave unexpectedly, etc.).

Most of us would have little issue with a buddy popping into a room and saying, "Hey, can I hang out here while y'all RP and chat a little OOC about the group's plans today while I'm at work?" (And they get a yes or no and life goes on.)

I suspect plenty of people would take issue with a total stranger OOCly meandering into their bedroom and plunking their ass down with a bucket of popcorn, without a word, waiting to be entertained.

Culture and expectations are super relevant in these cases. Now, that this player would go on the attack if her behavior was questioned or she was asked to leave/etc.? Not OK. She still had, gods help us all, reason to be confused, and from her perspective, other people were the ones being assholes to her by telling her to get the heck out of the room. (She was not the brightest bulb, but she was not being deliberately obtuse, either. I think at least a few hundred sparkly white hairs from that year are owed to her alone.)

@silentsophia All the hugs. I am so sorry to hear things are going so awfully. (I am glad to see you back and around, though. Had been worrying for you and wondering how things were going out there.)

Also: my very favorite yarn on earth to dye is like that. If I wanted more, I'd have to order a full shipping container of it from the manufacturer in China and have it sent to the local port, where I would presumably have to pick it up... somehow. IT EXISTS! It just reaaaaaally may as well not. (I have zero doubt I could dye multiple tons of yarn! I have... none of the other things required to buy, skein, process, wring, reprocess, store, etc. that quantity of anything. )

@faraday Ghost isn't the one displaying the entitled attitude at all.

That was in one of Nemesis' posts: "All you need to do is get this $120 router in order to allow this!" (which would allow them to play through the style of connection they are using, which the game owner did not want to do for reasons).

That crosses the entitlement line for me: "I want to use your freely offered thing, but I can't the way it is, so you go spend money so you can let me!"

It's pretty awful, really.

@three-eyed-crow That's totally a conversation that'd need a Pit version if it's in Constructive otherwise, because I really will invent new profanity to throw at these people. I really will. Triply so when they're in/seeking/expecting/demanding leadership positions of some kind. I will absolutely invent new foul language just for them, and they'll deserve every new four letter word of it.

@insomniac7809 I empathize... a lot. I tend to stumble over a 'the world moves in mysterious ways, and we may never truly know' and hope they figure their deity of choice called them 'home' or somesuch.

ETA: Also a lot of 'it's all right to not know' and 'it's all right to grieve'. These things are sometimes most important for someone to hear, even if it is less immediately comforting than something like 'Jesus wanted another angel' and similar.

This is worth linking here, too, as it's relevant to this discussion as well. In this case, using an ip-fetch image setup on a forum to potentially identify posters and link them with game accounts.

<sarcasm>...because that can't and won't go horribly wrong in a hundred ways, no, never.</sarcasm>

(Thanks to @RnMissionRun for linking that in the Armageddon thread.)

Respectfully, I think you're both (Theno and Roz) saying something very similar, and using different language to do it.

I've played with folks who have insisted that playing anything but 'hunt the monster' was a waste of time. I've played with folks who thought that not going into every personal detail of their character's purely social birthday weekend party trip were missing a critical character development opportunity.

These two types people are probably never going to see eye to eye on what an ideal game would entail, and that's ultimately fine. They just have different ideas of what constitutes fun, and they want the game they are on to be promoting and enabling and supporting the kind of fun they want.

In an ideal world, there will be games that cater to both, and sometimes, the same game will suit both (in part because side trips are something players can do amongst themselves off in a temp room on their own), but more often than not, they're going to be happier on different games that focus more in the direction of the kind of fun they're into. This is also totally fine. It really, really is.

Also, goddammit, I really liked the ideas I had on this specific front, which I'm not going to go into, but consider a fist raised to the sky and shaken at both of you because my waffling-fu has me on the fence again about dev. DAMMIT, people. This fencepost is giving me splinters on my butt.

@Ganymede We're in a similar position with one of our kitties, too. (-1, +1) ALL the hugs in the world sent; it's hard enough without having to explain. Especially to kids, dang.

@thenomain said in Make it fun for Me!:

there's no rule against griefing someone else's story. You can't tell me that this isn't the best story; who are you to tell me how to tell stories! (etc. etc.)

This, exactly, is what I mean by 'bad faith'. That's beautifully put.

The tl;dr to me has always been 'act in good faith'. That's essentially my personal translation of 'don't be a dick'. (I would ramble about proactive vs. prohibition on this, but I already invoked tl;dr.)

@rizbunz I think a playlist is in order. Definitely. It would also need 'Miss Atomic Bomb' by The Killers on it, just on principle.

I'm another member of the chorus composed of people 'the holidays make me incredibly depressed'. (Our carols suuuuuuuuuck.)

This is coming in the midst of both seasonal depression, a longer-running major depression, and two major health issues. Not great timing.

I remember the holidays when I was a kid. This isn't a 'when I was young the world was different' complaint; many people still have the holiday season I had as a child in their lives today and that is something that makes me, if not happy, more at peace with the world than I might be otherwise.

It isn't that the world has changed, it's that the people around me have. Many are simply gone, which is how things work in that whole 'living means eventually dying' thing at some point or another. Others have simply changed; they've stopped caring, or have shifted focus away (or in one case further away) to other things at this time of year.

So, uh. I spend today, Christmas Eve, not deliberately alone, since I don't avoid the people around me, but I do take some time to myself to just talk to the people who aren't here any more.• I miss them. I haven't forgotten them and never will, and I will never not miss them, particularly at this time of year. I tell them about the things that happened over the year, about things I know they'd love, things that would have driven them bonkers.

And it helps me make it through. It doesn't matter if it's all ultimately stupid, because it helps.

So, uhm. Peace be with you and all the rest for the remainder of the day, MSB. I hope your holidays are good, whatever they are, and if you don't celebrate any of them and somehow feel left out, I say fuck it, make one up and have yourself a blast. If you're missing someone, maybe try this, and see if it helps. I hope it does, if you do.

This isn't normally the sort of thing I'd share here, especially lately, but it looks like a lot of us are missing someone, or maybe a great many someones, right now. It felt like the right time.

Be well, be merry if you can, but try not to let yourself think there's something wrong with you or be hard on yourself if you aren't able to manage merry, OK?

• Or the ceiling, depending on your view of what happens after people pass. Even if that is the case, which I don't dismiss as a possibility, I believe that so long as someone is remembered, they are there with us. These people shaped our lives in some way, and in that, too, they are with us, and they always will be.

@thenomain The reason I steer away from sportsmanship is that it implies adherence to 'the rules' (including 'avoiding fouls'), and a lot of the worst actions are entirely permissible within the scope of the rules of a game -- but they're shitty things to do to a fellow player that common decency should dictate one does not do.

It's entirely within the rules of most games to be that jerk who kills a newbie for sitting on their favorite barstool over and over and over again, but it's a pretty profoundly crap thing to do to a fellow player. Many players who engage in this behavior trot out the 'the rules say you're dead now, byeeeeeeee!' and accusations of bad sportsmanship on the part of the person they just screwed over if they don't suck it up with a smile, because technically speaking, not adhering to the rules is part of the very definition of bad sportsmanship -- which is also shitty, as it is piling on shaming and abuse, insult added to injury.

I think, essentially, 'more than just following the rules is required of people to make this work' needs to be flagged in some respect, and a proactive 'act in good faith' works nicely for this.

I'm kinda with Lotherio on this one. It depends on whether they want to be involved with the metaplot or not, pretty much. They may just want to chill out and play the bartender who hears all the crazy stories that come in from chaos in the metaplot, or be a team medic who is just struggling with patching up the people who keep coming in bruised and bashed around. There are usually roles like this in fiction that aren't core to the plot but still add a lot to the story and the enjoyment of watching it, so I'm pretty low key on this one. They may be a great information vector (bartender), or provide an essential service (medic). Even something like someone who knows how to farm and is interested in creating a crop in a setting like The Walking Dead may mostly be picking beans, but they may be giving people a reason to go out and quest through the dangerous wilds to get seeds or stock they know they can grow effectively in the space they have, and so on. If they expect to be the star while doing this, that's clearly an issue, but there are enough examples of this in fiction and media that are useful and engaging for someone who is a casual player and wants to stick to something simple with minimal time available for the game.

@arkandel said in Managing Player Expectations:

• As long as you're spoiling things for your players, stomp on false expectations. If some things definitely won't happen in the scope of your game inform players early OOC. "No, you guys won't find a cure for the zombies and restore the world to a pre-apocalyptic state" is a fair thing to say, then they can then still work on that IC, but you did your part. "You won't discover gunpowder and invent muskets in my fantasy game". Done.

1000x this. "That's not something we want in the game."

@moth He is adorable. The all blue-grey kitties are beyond gorgeous. Having a cat is a good thing, and the mellow 'come to you' sort of cats are the very best. It's also a great age; they know how to cat already, for the most part, so a lot of the kitten issues aren't things you'll need to worry about, and you'll get a good idea of their actual personality right off the bat.

I would try to offer name suggestions, but, uh. My current cats are Tesla "Disney Princess of Cats" McDaintysnoot and Tama "Snow Weasel" Gothsbane McDaintysnoot, which means I should probably not be allowed to suggest kitty names to others.

@arkandel said in Spotlight.:

For example should a ghoul have a near equal chance for prominence in a Vampire game, or a sidekick in a superhero MU*?

(I'm going to focus on this line specifically, because time's still a thing.)

I don't entirely see these as the same thing. The first is primarily based on an inherent power disparity. The second is based more on a role/status disparity -- as there are probably plenty of examples out there of 'sidekick' characters being far more powerful than the person they're a sidekick to (the 'small fluffy thing that turns into a doomship of doomness' from an anime I forget the name of off hand comes to mind here) -- and is more in line with a noble/commoner relationship. Status is relevant in the first example within vampire society, but not in society at large, and this is a noteworthy difference, particularly in a game that focuses on a broader world than just vampire politics (any multisphere game, etc.).

I'm going to point at Game of Thrones here. Samwell definitely starts out in 'sidekick' territory at best. What does he do? The same is true of Bronn, The Hound, Hodor, and Podrick. What do they do?

How different would the story be if they all stayed where they began?

All of them have vital roles to play in the story, and all of them have major moments to shine. Not as many, perhaps, as some of the bigger names, but they're good examples of where my brain is on this topic.

It's really not too hard to handle for some things; it can be mentioned in a setting file somewhere. 'We don't plan to have any major advances in technology occur within the game, and any major developments or changes requested will be denied.' (And so on.)

This is one you can even make and keep very vague: 'The game we wish to run has been designed as presented in the news/wiki/whatever, and any major developments or changes that would massively alter the world would change the essential nature of the game as intended, and that everyone on it came here to play. Requests that would fundamentally change the physical, social, or technological landscape and reality of the game will be denied.'

Usually, Xmas is the same collection of Lindor Balls for my husband and I to split and a pair of slipper socks. Maybe a few cool beads my mother found somewhere.

I finally caved and asked for ONE THING specifically this year...

...and my darling husband got it. (My mother promptly stole it to drool over for a few days, but it is got!)

This has not happened since I was 11 or so, so it's a happy squee thing indeed.

(Also, this year's slipper socks are fucking adorable.)

I think the whole 'Luke and Leia' thing is partly why characters on not just the heroic level, but the epic level (which is how I would classify them), are often NPCs on some games.

That keeps everyone in that 'second tier but still impactful and heroic' space.

@thenomain It means that there are going to be different power levels you can target for plots/etc. There will always be that handful of high-powered characters -- and newbies aren't shut out of it by default. Those people (edit: the day one created dinos), if they have alts, will necessarily also have lower level characters for mid-range or lower level storylines.

This isn't something to overlook in terms of its value. It means on Player's Day One, they can be involved with the same big bads as the dinos.

At the same time, simply being a dino doesn't mean someone is necessarily going to be a big bad themselves, because they may have used their higher tier character slot up for a different alt.

Without this sort of breakdown, a system that works like TR/FC's ultimately means that all of that dino player's alts are all big bads, and all newbies are stumbling over their own feet with starting stats. Though the newbies of today catch up in six months to the dinos of yesterday, tomorrow's newbies face the same slog.