Posts made by surreality

I'm still just not on board with this theory that incivility or poor behavior on games is the fault of the forum. I just can't get behind that one at all.

@ixokai Yeah, I don't see it working for different existing WoD game lines, because of what you're describing, unless it's all heavily house-ruled. I think a modern urban horror/fantasy game with a very similar feel could be done in that way, though, to make it easier to learn/etc. and keep the code a heck of a lot more sane.

I promise, I only mention HERO 'cause it has that general take on powers -- the 'generic power, has mechanic X, use whatever SFX you like' -- in terms of its setup. All the conditionals it sets up for the powers and the rest of the game mechanics I... yeah, all the nope. It made my head hurt, but I am a fan of taking that approach in general to powers for a game someone's going to have to learn from scratch and want to learn quickly and jump into play in a spreadsheet-lite way.

This is kind of the approach I was taking with stuff I've been kicking around for a while, I think.

As in, 'ability X' may have different flavor text for various character types, but one mechanic for all. So you have vampire regeneration and werewolf regeneration, but they use the same system, code, and mechanics, just with different flavor text explaining the how and why it's happening.

HERO system does this, for the most part. It's just... really extra special on the spread-sheety-ness.

@Tinuviel @Auspice This is how I feel about anything that has anything to do with the crockpot, too. If I'm not making a ton of it, screw it.

We make the beef stew in a gigantic pot, as the slow cooker is just too small, with an obscene cost's worth of meat in it. It never, ever lasts the week. Not ever.

Tangent: we have amazingly well-behaved cats re: human food. Aside from Ancient Cat having had this weird fixation on broccoli, they keep away from it, though sometimes they'd get sniffy at a bowl once empty. Except the beef stew. We'd get whined at to hurry up so they could have the bowls. Because we have the sense of humor of five year olds, the beef stew bowls have ever since been referred to as 'the bowly grail's.

@tinuviel said in RL things I love:

Exceptions, of cause, for when I cook pasta. Over three decades on this planet and I still have no idea how to accurately judge pasta when cooking it... so I cook it all.

I was raised by my Italian granny for the most part. I swear to you, this was how she did it, too. And not because she was often feeding a pile of people, either. (It did not hurt that her cooking was so good that the leftovers never lasted long, if we're being real about it all here.)

That woman taught me how to improv the shit out of a decent meal from random things around the kitchen on the fly and make some damned fine sauce, but so help me... the whole box, every time. There was a time I would, say, eyeball it on a third of the box or half the box, but then the box would sit there partially used for weeks and start going off, and just no. No, it's pasta all week, motherfuckers, if I'm cooking pasta.

It helps that my husband's nickname amongst his friends is 'the furnace that walks' for how much his miraculously-not-at-all-fat self eats. It gets us down to pasta for half a week, motherfuckers, and I can totally live with that.

@arkandel That is actually sort of neat. It makes me smile to see more people embrace the joys of geekdom, and that's pretty clever. (Also, nicely done ads from the look of things. Sometimes ads for comic stuff get a bit gonzo in the bad way visually or go all kinds of rainbow-happy.)

Anger: ow, ow, hand cramps from filling out almost a thousand tiny little price labels. Typing is actually letting my palm stretch finally and it is AHHHHHHHHHHHhhh...

Bonus anger: knowing the more my hand cramps, the less legible my handwriting gets, and the more of those labels I'mma have to redo.

If I can ever find the sign I am apparently wearing that says 'every infamous creeper in the universe, inquire within', I was planning to burn it, but y'all are welcome to borrow it if you want a refresher.

(I highly doubt I would have any takers on that.)

Sovereign is literally the only one I have run across that I ever managed to dodge, and that's because he was just so glaringly obvious, so I kept stonewalling any attempted inquires along the conversational lines that would lead that way. (I only ever dealt with Custodius as staff, not a player, but he still managed to be skeevy then.)

Seriously, I hate this sign. It's worse than 'Kick Me'.

@thatguythere I think that's a completely valid use and function of the forums, but it isn't their only valid use and function.

As in, I would like to see the forums work effectively for someone who wants to use them for that reason even if that's the only reason they're really interested, but I don't think that's the only purpose we should be tailoring content around.

The 'Tastes Less Gamey' section is, I think, useful and valid. I think it's also a lot more of a crap shoot in a sense. Someone made a good point earlier about RL Anger being there, and that things get snarly and heated in that thread more than a little at times -- though, I'll be honest... it's kinda right there on the tin, it's a thread specifically about things people are real world pissed off about, and I think any attempt to constrain language or grar factor there would be misplaced. I don't think personal attacks on each other are necessarily appropriate there (unless I guess you're roomies with someone here RL but then, jeez, yell at the person RL and leave us out of it, eee!) but getting snarly about shitweasels at work and calling them that, or going overboard on the adjectives describing a horrible situation isn't something I'd feel appropriate to stomp down on as 'not playing nice enough'. Again, it's kinda right there in the title, it's not even about things on games or in the hobby that people are (reasonably or otherwise) genuinely angry about, so trying to insist nobody post angrily about things in that thread seems, erm... not the best idea.

@ganymede Ow, that was my very favorite spleen.

@ganymede Your mom has way more sense than my mom on that front. Way more.

(After being hit by a crazy asshole who ran a red light and nearly killed me and my passenger... )
Me: "Why are you screaming at me about the medical bills?"
Mom: "Because the car insurance isn't willing to pay for more treatments."
Me: "Then sue the asshole that plowed my car into a telephone pole!"
Mom: "We're Catholic, you turn the other cheek!"
Me: "But even the quack you sent me to says I shouldn't even be walking yet and my fever is still over 103!"
Mom: "Turn. The. Other. Cheek!"
Dad: "And get back to class, you have a science test, remember?!"

<twenty years pass>

Mom: "I can't run errands today, I have to stay home to be here when the lawyer calls back."
Me: "...lawyer? What happened, mom?!"
Mom: "Oh, the car insurance won't pay any more of my medical bills from when the guy rear-ended Cynthia's SUV three years ago and dinged her bumper."
Me: "..."

...not that I'm still bitter or anything about not being able to lift anything over 5lbs ever since...

Tolerating differences -- and yes, I realize it's not the same context -- is part of the point of this conversation. There are a lot of different interests. Not everybody has to share them all. Not everybody has to participate in the ones that are available.

A lot of talk has lent toward an interpretation that a stronger hand is all that's required for everything to get better. The problem, though, is that everyone has a different idea of what 'better' is, and what that stronger hand should be doing (if anything).

I like having an outlet where I am not forced to be civil. I am not always civil, and neither is anyone else. Sure, some people couch their harsh attitudes behind pretty words, but that doesn't change the reality of those attitudes being harsh; a serious personal attack or slight can be made in very pretty and formal words and it makes it no less a serious personal attack; a polite slap across the face is still a slap across the face.

I strongly believe that if the outlet in which we're not required to be civil to one another goes, it's highly likely we'll see considerably more of the above. While people think they're getting away with shit when they do those things, they're really not, because people do notice, and pretty words don't obfuscate nastiness very well in a hobby often focused on the creative use of language populated by folk generally far more literate than average. That brings the entire place down, from my perspective, because the folks doing this stuff? Already think that's civil and appropriate behavior, when really, it's genuine Pit fodder (read: it's not civil, respectful, etc.) sans profanity.

I want to see less of that shit outside the Pit, and shit is an accurate descriptor of these behaviors. I want to see more people willing to say, "Hey, that's not cool," when people act like this in areas that are supposed to focus on respectful dialogue and the exchange of ideas.

Removing the outlet for impolite dialogue isn't going to make the uncivil behavior go away. It's going to ensure it spreads in the form of even more 'fake nice', verbal sideswipes, ugly implications, holier-than-thou bullshit snootbaggery, and so on, because the only way to actually remove incivility is to remove it from people. Nobody's figured that one out yet, unfortunately.

@arkandel Translation: super nice and warm without being roasty.

@apos said in How should IC discrimination be handled?:

And let's be real, the number of players that would even think in those terms is pretty small, and most people just wanna play an obnoxious trope, stir up some trouble for their own fun, and give zero fucks about how annoying or upsetting it is for everyone else.

I may have just been lucky, but my experience is the opposite of this. I've run across a few horrible sorts that go the obnoxious trope route, and there's no question that they're a problem. They're also a problem that stands out in a very glaring way, and it's a way that obscures a lot of people who are behaving exactly as described as the ideal -- which isn't as readily noticed, because those players are integrating with the game in a healthy way that doesn't negatively impact anyone's experience there to make them a topic of conversation in the first place.

Finally, after like... over a year, it's hair re-greening day. The usual mid-year re-greening got stomped by post-hospital blearghs and a major case of the 'fuck it's.

We waited way too long to make an appointment, my hair is butt-length so it takes like... 6 hours on average, and she still scooted us in before I have to do the show this coming weekend.

Dishwater brown + MAGIC SPARKLE WHITE* + rainbow pastel hell from a few inches down is seriously just not a good look for me, and I will be so glad to be rid of it.

I that woman.

• We are both cheering it on to hurry the fuck up with that shit, because magic sparkle white is awesome. Dad has it, and his dad had it. It is ice white and it actually does sparkle like glitter in sunlight, which is just crazy. This is the solitary positive hair gene I got from my family. Dad? Thick black hair. Mom? Wispy strawberry blonde. Me? Dishwater wispy brown bleah. Mom? Shaves her legs twice a year. Me? HAHAHAHAHAHAHA nope.

@auspice Another thing on this is encouraging people to incorporate this material within their own poses, within reason, and this can strongly reinforce these elements within a theme.

Even if I'm not chill with people trying to make my play experience all about sexism, odds are good I'm going to reference it in my own poses in small ways: people picking up and leaving the table when she sits down, people giving her a wider berth on the street, some day she comes in and complains about having a harder time finding qualified crew, maybe a few other women hiding a tiny smile of pride about the existence of a 'Ms. Captain' even if they're still wary, and so on.

Again, it's possible for that to go too far -- as in, into that 'pity me' attention-whoring space -- but that tends to be easy to spot, and can be nipped in the bud as needed.

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:

1. 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'.

2. 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.

3. 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.)

4. 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.)

5. 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.

@ganymede said in Regarding administration on MSB:

I think an Honest Review section is important. I think it needs to be watched carefully. I think the Hog Pit needs to remain as a check against pedantry and sophists. And I think that we need to be careful to keep the toxicity where it is supposed to be.

^ THIS. (When an upvote isn't enough.)

There are a lot of things, in my 'ideal world', that I would change. My ideal take on things (which I don't expect anybody to agree with or adopt) looks something like this, in the form of a collection of scattered thoughts; I don't exempt myself from any of the following crits or concerns:

• I see a lot of complaints about the expressions frustration that take a form someone doesn't like, but what I'm not often seeing from the same people is an understanding that those are also expressions of frustration and can come across in a way that someone else doesn't like. (For clarity: I apply this in all directions, including to myself; for instance, I don't like the very intimate and cutting real 'you are mentally ill' sorts of attacks but don't mind things so ridiculous they can't possibly be true, some hate both, some mind neither, and different things are going to be awful to different people.) This becomes a cycle, fast, and it's pretty much the stationary bike of getting anywhere productive at all.

• Myself as example, because I don't have a good word for the start here: I over-explain things and repeat myself a lot. I can tell you this is because I don't think I'm being heard or that it seems that my perspective has not been clearly stated in a way that it can be understood whether someone agrees with it or not, but that's not going to stop accusations of brow-beating or that I'm trying to insist that my opinion is the only valid opinion if someone is intent on believing otherwise. (If I had to guess, this is where faraday and I were butting heads in more or less the same way earlier.) For other folks, it's some other pattern or go-to behavioral response that could very easily be interpreted multiple ways, some positive, some negative (and sometimes a combination of the two). I do actually think it's pretty unfortunate that the first response is usually the most pessimistic possible assessment, and a lot of us do it. I would like to see things get better on that front. (Told y'all I really am a pie-eyed optimist.)

• Rare is the person who is angry or hostile because that's 'just how they are', or because they're a crappy person. There is so much focus on how people are expressing themselves lately that it is making it uncomfortable to express anything at all for a lot of folks, and for a very specific reason. That person's discussion about their problem or issue gets co-opted by someone nitpicking how they expressed their problem, and that very understandably leads to frustration and more anger. Not only is their chance to be heard being taken from them on what they are seeing as an unrelated technicality which has now become the focus of discussion, instead of getting any support, empathy, or (gasp!) helpful advice, now they're getting picked on for how they said it on top of their original problem. I don't know how many ways I can say it: I consider this extremely not cool. On some level, this feels to me like a case of 'but what were you wearing at the time?' and it is uncomfortable to watch. I've seen more or less egregious examples in which this is very clearly the intended message, too, and I think we can probably all agree that is a spectacularly shitty message to send. Things like this: "Something bad happened, and it was shitty!" "It probably happened to you because you can't control your potty mouth!" <twenty posts follow about how potty-mouthed people suck> ...are awful on multiple levels. I would really, really like to see less of this kind of behavior.

• Some thought put toward the idea of compassion and care as things that exist in different forms. People accomplish these things in different ways and wires cross often about it. There is such a thing as a storm of good intentions. I'm going to use the recent example: "Hey, this issue is important, maybe we should start a thread about it specifically so it doesn't get lost?" is something both @Auspice and I have run into, apparently, and I'm sure we're not the only ones. This is a demonstration of concern from me, and if I say this, it's because I think what you have to say is important and I think more people should think about it in a serious way. It does not mean I think you should shut up and fuck off. It does not mean I think there should be a thread dedicated just to your experience alone or that you should be put under a microscope for dissection-by-forum. It means I think a lot of other people probably have similar concerns and experiences, and that they're something worth talking about specifically instead of as a tangent to something else. It means I think it would be useful to have a space where other people who have had similar experiences and may have advice can offer it or offer empathy, or people who have never known (or felt) they could speak up about what happened to them have space to see that, yes, they, too, can do that. Instead, we get things like 'survivor silencer' or 'telling people to shut up' thrown in our faces, when the intent is demonstrably the opposite. "I'm not comfortable doing that, I'd rather just do the thing here," is really all there is to that. To which I would cheerfully say, 'OK, want me to nudge if there's ever a thread about this or if I decide to start one?' (probably privately; I wouldn't make an initial private query because it would feel more invasive/personal than I am comfortable with). I would really like to see more threads focused on these issues, because the number of times they come up suggests they're prevalent. If they're problems and they're prevalent, I think they're worth talking about. If they're collected together, we're better able to look at patterns and trends on that issue, and if we can spot common threads? We'll be better able to spot them brewing, nip them in the bud, and/or craft better policies or standards going forward to avoid them occurring again. That's what my idea of constructive is re: horrible shit happening to people: "How do we, as a community or as individuals, prevent this from happening to someone else again?"

• Disagreement with someone is not a silencing attempt. Criticism of behavior can be, but this one gets trotted out a whole lot lately, often by people who are criticizing someone else's behavior only to have theirs criticized in return, and suddenly criticism has evolved into a silencing attempt the moment they're not the ones doing the criticizing -- and guess what, that actually often becomes, yes, a silencing attempt. So in a number of instances we're attempting to silence people by claiming they're trying to silence us, and I am not capable of summing up my feelings on this pattern of behavior in a civil fashion, because it's genuinely reached that degree of This is Not Good and I'd Like to Think Better of Us Than This Pattern Indicates. (Please, all ye gmods and little fishes, let there be something about this in the dang 2.0... )

@wizz said in Regarding administration on MSB:

@surreality said in Regarding administration on MSB:

Those changes took time. They evolved. None were the result of someone stomping a foot and saying, "No one is allowed to say mean things any more because that's not OK!"

OK, boiling down the whole argument to "I don't like it when people are mean" is not what @faraday or I are talking about and it's a little condescending that that is what you and @ixokai are trying to make it about.

And that's not actually what I said. There's a difference between stating a distaste for something and deeming it unacceptable behavior; it may not be relevant to you, but it actually is to me, and my words were chosen deliberately to reflect that.

It also directly relates to the repeated reality we're presented with: 'my standard is here, yours is over there, and yet we have third parties whose standard (the 'everything but praise is an assault') is in yet a different place'.

For my part, I also wasn't trying to apply some weird equivalence of the behavior here and on WORA to the entire, full-stop, MU*ing community and literally everyone in it.

You haven't. Others indeed have. I wasn't replying to you or to @faraday, either.

(If you haven't encountered it there, wow, great. That's a genuinely a good thing, no sarcasm intended at all.)

Sure I've had crappy experiences on games.

Very rarely with anyone on this forum.

Shit, I've had fun with @Tempest on a game that was wholly constructive, collaborative, and entirely civil and friendly, with no improper behavior anywhere to be found, and she makes no bones about trolling and being snarky here. Would that be what you'd expect? Probably not, but it's still the reality of the situation.

I also keep saying: wow, was it ever worse before WORA. So much worse.

I mean, you either see it, or you don't. You either recognize the attitude that exists here as a problem, or you don't.

Well then, I guess I just don't. My experiences are wholly and completely contrary to your premise.

Is there stuff that goes on here I don't think is OK? Sure. Plenty of it. Odds are high it's not the same things any other person would point out, because as I said repeatedly before and repeated yet again above, different people have different sensitivities and different sensibilities. For instance, I swear by rote. I mean no offense by it whatsoever, and am not offended by the use of profanity at all. Does that mean no one is ever going to take offense or be offended by it? Of course not.

Ultimately I think the purpose this whole conversation serves is to show what percentage of the board feels one way or the other, which to be honest is also a great barometer for "whether or not this iteration of the forum is a good fit for you."

^ This, yes.

@rnmissionrun That I'll agree with -- in the sense that I'm optimistic enough that I think people do strive to embrace those virtues.

The hostility is, from all I have perceived of it over time, basic human behavior. Generally, people acting like high schoolers. Which was fine when most of the people in the hobby were actually in high school or early college, but has lingered more than it ideally should.

I don't see things going any different in any other aspect of life, though. That we have these arguments without the endless rape threats, political bomb-throwing, or even more 'lol k' shitposting than we have already speaks volumes for the integrity and intelligence of the community, regardless.

@faraday Why is it not OK for him honestly to state his feelings about your response by saying he hates that response?

How and why is it different from the exchange earlier, in which you said both examples would be hurtful to you, I posted a contrary experience of my own feelings with acknowledgement and understanding that yours is different, and you came back with a universal statement that very clearly intimates that your perception and feeling is the only correct one? I have to admit, that looked like throwing up a metaphorical wall through which no further productive discussion can occur to me, too, only a trotting out of a contest of extremes as blatant strawmen.

If you want people to listen to your experiences and respect your perspective and feelings about a subject, you should ideally be willing to reciprocate that respect and understanding without ascribing negative connotations to their own experiences and expressions of their feelings and perspective.