@faraday Same. It worked OK for that 'here is a week to play downtime for this IC period of time, hash out as needed'. (Usually, there was almost none to be concerned with -- it was 'go do your personal stuffs' time.)
It's why I really liked the slower than 1:1 timescale so much when we had it. It led to a lot -- OMG SUCH A WHOLE LOT -- less figuring it out and playing catchup.
We have lives and such. 
The extra time really, really, really helped.
@Auspice I love non-sweetened, mildly-flavored seltzer, and I still choked on laughter. That's good. (I can't do artificial sweeteners, never could. Instant ill.)
@Derp said:
There is no substance to it, it's all about how loudly she can protest and exhaust the other people.
This is exactly the sort of behavior I was describing, so that she went and demonstrated it to perfection was almost like a bonus.
The 'protest, whine, play victim, throw out accusations without any foundation' bullshit behavior from certain parties was one of the two reasons I quit staffing recently. (The other, being totally burnt out after having dealt with the above for months and running out of patience with it, which is something you just have to have to deal with people who are utterly blind to their own behavior as well as basic reality.)
This is pretty much one of the fastest ways to lose ethical staff: heap abuse on them until they decide that trying to ensure everyone's getting as much happy as the game allows is not worth putting up with your crazy flailing.
When you really drill down on it, having ethics requires a lot of self-examination. Having ethics requires a person to ask themselves, often, "Am I doing the right thing?" to avoid the as many of the 'grey area' errors mentioned wayyyyyyyyyback when as possible, if nothing else. If you're not capable of this, or consider this to be a sign of a guilty conscience, well, good luck having actual ethics worth half a damn. You can follow the rigid letter of the law and still be an utterly unethical fuckhead, since no set of rules covers every permutation or circumstance. A sound ethical foundation is required to structure the rules in the first place, but solid practice of those principles is what fills in the gaps to cover all of the endless circumstances nobody ever warned you were possible, or no one ever thought people needed a rule to cover in the first place. (See endless discussions of social contracts as a demonstration of this.)
@nyctophiliac Amazing story, brilliantly told. I'm dyin' over here. Also, omg, I am so sorry!
I was, initially, trying to make the point that assuming staff are monsters by default is a damaging trend in this hobby.
But frankly, if simply making that statement with an example of someone doing it gets me accused of shit, I am going to go for the fucking throat and there is not going to be an apology for it afterward.
It does, actually, demonstrate why it's a problem.
On one hand, you've got the reality that people who work hard to ensure they are being fair and reasonable and all the rest, usually making sacrifices to do so and getting no small amount of abuse for doing so, are not exactly doing it because it's super fun. Generally speaking, they're doing it because other people having fun, for whatever reason, is important to them.
The reason can be a shitty reason, but isn't always the case. Some people might want everyone to like them, or heap praise on them, or whatever else along those lines, but most people I've come across understand the basic principle that the more peaceable the kingdom, the better the odds are that fewer problems will arise and the more fun they will get to have, too, doing the same things everyone else is supposed to be doing: just playing the damn game.
I don't take this quite as far as @Ganymede does in its interpretation, that whichever party is the most grating presence, right or wrong, should be shown the door, but I do think people go too far on handing out the twenty-second chances for some of the worst offenders. (Spider being a prime example.)
There is a point at which being "fair" in the handing out of 'just one more chance' to people consistently doing damage to the well-being of the game community becomes unfair to everyone who is subject to their outbursts, abusive garbage, creeperism, or whatever their particular bit of nasty is.
I don't even pretend I have the solution to this one. While I don't agree personally with Gany's, she has one that works for her, and if it works, it's more than what a lot of places have.
A big difference in how a MUX works vs. a tabletop game is simply this: people generally have to earn their welcome to a spot at the table. We can obviously have invite-only games, and there are some out there, but that still isn't quite the same thing. A MUX needs more people than the average tabletop game does to properly thrive. The closest thing I have to a 'solution' is based on this, to some extent -- that being that some folks, and they're very few in number even after close to 20 years, have earned not a welcome, but an unwelcome. Spider, Jeurg; that class of 'unwelcome presence'. VK -- used as an example since it's all present here for clarity and thus makes a good example -- may have obviously pissed me off and I may be personally wary as hell of her, but she does not even come close to the level of consistent horrible that, to me, would earn an 'unwelcome'. There's nothing she's done that suggests doesn't care about the rules or is eager to break them if she can find means to do so to benefit herself, that she thinks rules don't apply to her, or that she thinks lying to other players to get around no-contact requests or exploiting them for her benefit is OK. I'm talking about people who make consistent practice of these kinds of 'the rules are only there when it's convenient to me or I can use them or staff as a weapon to browbeat others' behaviors, not people who I find personally irritating.
Magical Princess Murderflouf kitty-snores.
<flails at the cuteness>
She'll probably wake up and chomp me for that, but it will be worth it. (She is still learning 'no, you do not hit bone when you "let's play wrestle!" bite', having not learned as a kitten. Love hurts.)
@Arkandel said:
@surreality And yet - again at the time - I was in a cabal with someone who had Juerg issues, who had been told in no uncertain terms sleeping with him would have made them disappear and who went to staff - with logs - repeatedly asking for them to do something. The staff member responsible for it never did, and in fact they accused her of trying to avoid the consequenes of her character actions because they liked him more than her, and staff members over them in the chain of command backed the decision because they didn't want to get involved.
Does that sound at all like something we've been discussing in the thread? That's not an example, it's a thing that actually happened. I was there to see her leave the game over it.
It's not easy to be a good administrator. That's why there are so few of those well regarded by their peers - on top of actually being adept at game-things, being proactive and creative over a period of time they also need to stay impartial and get their hands dirty. That's not the kind of practice which wins friends, and in some cases it can alienate the ones they already have.
But even then telling a jerk from an abuser, someone you don't like from someone who's legitimately harming your game... that's the hardest thing. Putting a stop to what someone you might actually like is doing, knowing it'll piss them and their friends off - some of whom might be staffing as well - is plain rare.
It's easy to chastise or punish someone without ties to anything else. Going after well connected players requires actual conviction.
I agree with all of this.
I know I've lost friends over disagreements with them about policy issues, or because I've called them out on crap that shouldn't be happening (as players or staffers). It doesn't mean I like them any less -- but dang if plenty of them haven't liked me less for it.
To some extent, you need 'robot mode'.
A lot of people have trouble with this because they make it about themselves. "Will my friendship be harmed if I... " or "Will this bother my friend?" and so on. This isn't actually about the other person and what the other person is doing; it's a case of self-interest, that interest being the preservation of whatever relationship one has with the offending party (or friends of the offending party).
Being cognizant of that makes an enormous difference. Most people aren't. When it's about 'what am I going to lose?' it's harder. You can't let that be a factor, because it's not about you.
This is common sense to me, I dunno.
Clarification: '...this isn't actually about the other person... ' means 'these concerns are not the relevant concerns you should be having, you should be caring about the wellfare of the game, not what is important to you personally'.
I don't know how to even break this down but this is, uh, second scale of the texture, first step.
...partway through second step, which will take a while.
Web sheets are totally viable. You don't even need to take the step of doing them with a PDF; you can set up wiki forms and the likes to handle this.
Depending on the system, this may be more or less issue-laden. WoD is a nightmare, something like HorrorMU's system was pretty easy.
As to worries that someone would change something inappropriately -- which a lot of people have reasonable concerns about if players can manage their sheets on their own -- mediawiki takes care of this for you: it marks all the changes made, who made them, and when automatically as part of its default. If someone's engaging in funny business, it's easily spotted, and that people know these changes are marked/etc. is a good deterrent to those who might try to get away with such shenanigans if the changes were not so visible.
I have a moderately obscure first name.
I have seen it used in television twice for aliens/non-human fictional characters.
I have also now seen it occur four times in various paranormal shows as the victim of a haunting, which is really a peculiarly high incidence. (Including that one time the preview at the start of the episode re-enactment kicked off with a creepy voice whispering MY OBSCURE NAME. Beads and cats suddenly flying everywhere as I yikesed, having been caught totally off-guard... )
Dear Mom + Dad: Thanks for the weird name pick, guess you wanted me to get haunted.
Also, it was never a large game. It hit something of a perfect storm of people becoming very busy/ill/etc. all at once last I was there (a bit before the pandemic hit). So just a few people being knocked out makes a big difference, and we had a fair amount of that.
@Alamias The new baby is adorable! Our kitties are still not allowed to mingle, so I feel you on the aggro problems. (Old flouf is scaredy cat, new flouf is playful pouncy brat. This does not mix well, despite the floufs loving US just fine.)
I also love that you have a drawer of drow, of dwarves... my rational brain knows these are miniatures, but part of me wants it to be 'we open this drawer and a swarm of pixies fly out'.
@Groth ...and to add to this, 'if you're not sure you can do so convincingly in a given situation, you don't want to offend or hurt someone that way'.
@Macha That carriage house looks like it fell out of a storybook. (And it's probably bigger than my current house.) I think that's one of the coolest things about it, really! I am a sucker for Arts&Crafts/Craftsman/Prairie/Mission era architecture, and it hits a lot of those notes, which is funny since the house is so different, but it somehow still blends.
@Auspice Yeah, I remember her. I was talking about Taii Gordon from HorrorMU... she definitely didn't look white girl, but.
@saosmash If it makes you feel any better, my eyes are blue and I have central heterochromia. I am also just under 5ft tall. This thread makes me feel super called out for existing RL at this point, and I proooooomise you all no one would ever in a million years want me for their PB/on TV/etc.
@silverfox I know it isn't the same for me.
It's that I know how utterly furious I have been when people have asserted that I'm not a woman because <insert stereotype about women that I don't demonstrate>, for instance. My happy time goes poof, the escape is now 'is this sexist drivel I have to contend with or is this person just stupid or what'. I wonder if I have to educate this person so they don't fuck this up with someone else who may feel the same way I do.
At a minimum, I do not want to turn someone else's happy fun escapism time into that.
And that's when it's something fairly inoffensive. Some of it is incredibly offensive -- like 'all women are naturally submissive/inferior', or that women have an obligation to provide sexual gratification to men who pay any attention to them. That women aren't sarcastic, or that they always smile and giggle and anybody who doesn't loses their woman card, apparently.
I've been 'the only girl there' a lot. I've also been 'the only girl who doesn't fit in with girls that fit the mold of girl people were raised to conform to when I was a kid'. Neither is comfortable.
It is not impossible to extrapolate based on those feelings of discomfort and constant scrutiny and expectation and assumptions and sometimes horror over the gross stereotypes people throw in my face.
It's that, as a woman, I am hyper-aware of the situations and actions and all the rest that create those conditions and feelings -- because I have to be. It's shitty, but I have to be. This is another point of commonality -- in the broader sense -- that I can understand and extrapolate from.
It's that I don't know what those conditions and situations are for someone else. I am not as ingrained to the danger zones and hot stoves and sensitive places. (Every character is going to have individual ones, but they'll have cultural ones as well.)
While I'm sure none of the guys who offended the shit out of me with their 'but you know every woman just wants a bad boy dom' bullshit gave the first damn about it -- and some were incredibly offended at the notion that they even could be wrong about this as if I was some super rare exception! -- I'm just not like that.
It's not getting into trouble, or people being mad at me that concerns me. It's causing that hurt, that anger, that ruining of the fun escapism time for someone else.
Because that's something else we have in common: we both/all really value that fun escapism time. That feels innately more valuable to me, sharing that, whether we're personally challenging ourselves in the process or not.
I also feel very much like 'my personal challenge' in this instance is potentially at someone else's expense, which, in my view, may stick them them in a crap position in a way to shoulder the personal discomfort my wholly optional thought experiment may cause. I just can't get behind that.
First section almost done, should be done by morning if I can get up the oomph to work on it more.
@Auspice Meanwhile, most of the people not doing it have had various stripes of 'I could hurt real people and I don't want to do that in everybody's funtimes' as a fair bit of the reasoning, which is very much not 'Aryan man of might is the superiorest dominant being of beauty and power and I shall either be him or worship at his mightiest of wangs'. (S'cuse me, I think I just threw up in my mouth a little.)
Like, @Kestrel mentions one of these shitheels, and we've had some trolls with gross viewpoints crop up on the forum over the years, but they aren't in this thread. I doubt they'd care what anybody thought about the topic anyway.
@Ganymede They had to pull two of the implants last time, and hoped the bone would regenerate. It... didn't. Just filled in with gum tissue again, preventing the bone from growing. It wasn't totally unexpected the first time, since the extraction went VERY badly initially; it ripped out large pieces of bone along with the teeth.
So we figured this might be necessary... I just thought this was a 'check to see on next steps' and then schedule this if needs be, they just decided to do it then. Which is super cool of them to do -- it really is, since this is already a very long process, and this guy is fantastic -- but it was not something we were prepared for and now it's 'omfg ow ow ow' and not being to eat solid food at all for two weeks, which we kinnnnnnda try to shop for ahead of things when we know when it's comin'. The novocaine hasn't even worn off yet and the pain level is at a solid 'my eyes are tearing up' five.