Posts made by surreality

@Ganymede Seriously, I must be wearing a sign: Persistent creepers with unannounced fetishes, inquire within! That look of shock and horror on my face just means I'm totally into it!

I would like to spend less life hours like this:

...and I know I'm not alone here.

That's the Jeurg story, and it was about 3 years back now I guess? Which, as we all know now, is best resolved by way of get rid of Jeurg. Not helpful if you had no idea who he is/was.

Plenty of other people pulled similarly skeevy garbage in the same period of 6-8 months or so, with the same 'defense', and plenty of people I spoke to had similar experiences to mine. So, unfortunately, yes, this still happens, and it did not vanish in the 90s.

Sometimes staff was awesome; they were willing to boot someone who was reported, and though they requested to be frozen at the same time, apparently, I'm pretty sure if they hadn't asked, it was going to happen anyway. Other times, the same 'it's a non-consent game, deal with it', even if it involved some really shady and suspicious bait and switch, or 'we don't need dice, don't worry!' (we totally did need dice ).

I have no reason to believe people aren't still doing exactly this kind of crap, because there is no time over the 20+ years I've been playing that I haven't run into them. I have heard too many people share similar stories. Many have only shared them privately in page on a game or in PMs here on the forums after I've said something and will say flat out they don't feel safe even posting about their experience here on the forum, let alone reporting on the game, for a variety of reasons.

Should they speak up? Yes, I think they should. At the same time, I can only encourage them to do that so much before it starts to become bullying, from my perspective, and some people I've spoken to over the years have even mentioned this: that their friends push them to report it to the extent that they feel attacked on all sides and without support. Or the friends report it and they get dragged in when all they wanted was for this to go away or to have never have happened in the first place.

I adore the shit out of you, @Ganymede, but -- and this is not an insult -- this is a very different personality type from yours in many cases; you're very self-assured, confident, and willing to speak up. Not everybody is comfortable with this in the same way, or in the moment, and this is all I mean here. I can get why this seems really alien to you that people aren't just doing this in the way you're describing they should. I really do agree that people should be willing and able to speak up, but -- and this is critical -- people have different comfort zones here. Some people will speak up on a game that doesn't even say anywhere that you can, others won't without a real culture of it as a common thing supported by policy and reporting methods and transparency of punishments --
and some people will or will not be more likely to speak up or report based on any one of those three example things, too, for any number of reasons.

You have your solution, and I applaud that. I very strongly encourage others to embrace it, in the same way that I think players should inquire if there's a reasonable expectation that one of their specific sensitivities may come up in the course of an event/PrP/scene and they can't tell as @faraday describes, too.

I just also think that if you know you are, or are likely to, include rape, torture, child abuse, or a similar common major trigger in your event, PrP, or scene, you should mention this in the event announcement so people sensitive to the content can self-police by opting out, and people are prepared to engage with this content. I believe that providing tools and methods to foster communication are helpful. I get it; you don't need them. That doesn't mean they aren't, or cannot be, useful and helpful to others.

From game to game, what's useful is going to vary. Something that covers all the necessary bases for a setting like WoD is going to be way over the top for many other games. This is common sense, right?

So how's it different from person to person? We are not all the same, and we are not just collections of points on a sheet like a character is. Why would a 'one size fits all' solution work any better here?

That solution is what we already have now and I am telling you in no uncertain terms that it has absolutely failed people, and not just because they're cowards or irresponsible jerks who won't speak up/etc. or because they are somehow flawed in a way that makes them unfit for participation in the hobby.
Some feel intimidated.
Some feel they will be abused more if they speak up.
Some feel staff will punish or humiliate them if they report, or even speak up in the scene, and then get reported as 'the problem'.
Some feel they will be harassed or chased off the game.

There are lots of other possibilities here and here's the problem: we know these things have absolutely all happened and we've talked them to death over the years when they do; people who are not as comfortable by default typically have a reason for it that doesn't come down to being an irresponsible jerk who figures the warning didn't apply to them and charged in then started whining later, or that they're just too fragile a snowflake to properly function in the real world.

You've spoken about wondering about the people who just quietly leave because of these issues? See above; leaving was easier for them than they felt, for whatever reason, that conversation and the potential consequences of it would have been.

This problem is sincerely an immense and complicated one with a lot of moving parts. "Speak up, period" and "Ask, period" actually require more elaborate underpinnings than it may appear at first.

(I'm not trying to drag you back into this conversation, @faraday, and you are being used exclusively as a positive example here.) Look at @faraday's system. There are actually a number of reasons that is much more likely to work on her game than it is on a game like TR or FC or another large, sprawling staff, many many GMs, sort of game.

1. She's running all the staff work. She knows what's going on. There is no he-said-she-said amongst staffers, staff-shopping, or unknowns on the staff side. The amount of shady garbage cut out of the loop by this is big, and the amount of trouble caused by completely innocent miscommunications or omissions amongst staffers when resolving an issue is even more huge, because it's much more common. This makes a big difference in the end result.
2. She's running the main events and plots. (I think?) She knows who has inquired about what and when. She has also mentioned in other threads that she cares enough about her players that if there's a subject she knows is worrisome for someone, she will do her best to be mindful of not throwing that in their face herself, and will steer others away from that subject within reason. (There was a baby seal example in another thread about this, from what I half-recall at this hour.) That is a real demonstration of 'give a damn' and not everybody does. Also, again... one person running things. The amount of confusion or manipulation or 'did everybody get the memo?' is cut down dramatically, and this makes a huge difference in the end result in a whole bunch of ways.
3. She's seeing all the interpersonal issues that are reported and is aware of them. All of them. They're not filtering in through a variety of staffers who may or may not pass the information along and while there's still probably always going to be second hand reporting of issues by friends of people who had an issue, it's still a whole lot less 'game of telephone' and that means problem children become much more obvious, much more quickly, and she has a well-earned reputation as someone who is trustworthy and won't put up with people being abusive toward each other on her games. This is super huge, and yep, it makes a big difference, too.

So there's a lot going on there that isn't immediately evident in the specific resolution policy/method for these issues that has a real impact on the end result.

Change just one of those things, and you'll see what I'm getting at here, most likely. For instance, now picture swapping out @faraday with Elsa. Would you think the same approach would work just as well with Elsa at the helm? What about one of the old school 90s legends of crazy?

@Thenomain said in How to Change MUing:

So in answering "what do the characters do" and "what do the players do", always always remember your audience.

I always tried to approach it like this:

• What goals do the characters have? What goals do the players have, and do they differ?
• How do I facilitate and challenge the characters in game design, and provide opportunities for players to engage with this? (In concept and practice.)
• What do the players do with their characters when left to their own devices, and how can this be effectively steered toward best enabling players to create their own fun for themselves and others that is focused on the characters' goals and providing means for players to facilitate and challenge fellow players fairly to create an enjoyable game experience?

My run-ons have run-ons, but the compound questions are fairly compound for a reason. (As in, these things are linked enough that it should be possible to arrive at a cohesive answer that should answer the question fully, rather than as disparate parts.)

An RPG system is only one of the systems on any given M*. There's a policy system and a staff workload management and rules enforcement system and a series of systems that exist within the game world, and they all really do have to work together, or eventually, things start to break down, sometimes very fast.

@Ganymede said in Indicating Discomfort in a Scene (online):

So, the side topic is: what do you do about people who don't respect others' discomfort? My answer: show them out.

This, no question.

Bear in mind, though, those examples are seemingly silly, yeah... but I am that person that got asked for a coffee shop scene and got mage-panther mind-control oral rape from out of nowhere, and piping up about not being super keen on that or expecting that out of a coffee shop scene was 'it's a non-consent game, deal with it'. I mean, yes, I am apparently the M* equivalent of Wiley Coyote in terms of being an anvil (crazy asshole) magnet, but still, I don't see that being a thing in many genres that someone might have to think to mention.

Do not agree re: tag-team spandex anal werebro violation, though, dang. o.o Feather boas or nothing, motherfuckers. A girl's gotta have some standards. (Attacked while walking in the woods and clawed to hell? Sure! Even dead, ok, I can cope.)

Part of this, to me, is the risk thing. We already rate plots based on risk of character death, because it sucks to lose a character. Super common and extreme triggers are also risk -- to the players. Why we're considering the characters above the players in terms of importance when it comes to giving people a notification of risk factors that they'll use to determine if they wish to participate or not strikes me as being somewhat backward.

@faraday Again, that entirely misrepresents the point. It is not to make you take responsibility for someone else's mental health.

It is to alert people to commonly problematic content you plan to include in a scene so they can take responsibility for their own well-being and not attend.

By the logic you're using here, on every WoD game, when someone asks me if I would like to meet them for RP, I should be prepared to spend half an hour explaining to them what I do not want to have happen during a first meeting over lattes at the local coffee shop, from drive-by shootings to rape to witnessing child murder to being drugged by something that will turn me into a grue to <let this list just scrollllllllllllllll> and that I not be anally violated by an entire pack of werewolves wearing spandex and doing a WWF hand-slap whilst calling out 'TAG ME IN, BRO!', and then be prepared to be met with a similar list.

Again, in some games, and some themes, this is a much more reasonable approach than in others. Our respective experiences are shaping our perspectives here, and it is not in the least unreasonable to say that any individual approach is not going to be one size (aka 'approach') fits all (games).

@faraday We are never going to agree about this one, since I really just don't agree with that final analysis that this somehow absolves a player of any and all responsibility and leaves it solely on the GM in some way.

Everyone has a measure of responsibility. It is a cooperative hobby. There are very simple things everyone can do to contribute to creating a positive play experience for themselves and those around them.

Putting the onus entirely on any party involved doesn't work; sharing responsibility and demonstrating mutual respect may not always, but it has considerably more potential to do so with less waste of time, energy, and stress.

@Thenomain I actually really like +warn, for exactly the reasons you mention.

And, really, something like that could be easily modified for a comfort level thing, stoplight style, if someone wanted to use the stoplight thing. A default could be along the lines of +pref/yellow Bob giving Bob a message along the lines of 'you're making <sender> uncomfortable in the scene, please inquire or check their +prefs for details', or +pref/red Bob/<prefname> that could send them the text of the pref and your indication you'd like it to stop -- though really, this is a little uber-detached. Could be helpful, though. I do think +warn was a good idea and remains one.

@faraday I did miss that, yeah. Apologies.

There's no obligation to check prefs; I do think there should be one to mark specific common trigger content likely in scene.

And, really, there are plenty of things someone might be interested in story-wise in that setting. Someone who is fascinated with codebreaking and knows piles of history and spycraft and so on may be a great asset to a game, too, but that person may have been sitting right next to their buddy overseas when they hit an EID and watched their bunkmate's head explode. Yeah, I do think excluding that player from the game on the whole because someone simply can't be assed to say 'hey, <thing> is likely in this scene, be advised' is a massively crappy attitude to take toward any potential player, unless land mines are the entire point and thrust of your game. They aren't, and it's entirely possible for that example player to engage in the game in positive ways for themselves and others around them in a way that contributes to everyone's enjoyment without encountering that triggering content.

Quick edit: If someone's objection was 'Nazis are present', yeah, I would tell them this was so not the game for them, then. Similarly, if someone's trigger was 'outer space', obviously they shouldn't be on your BSG game. There is a 'duh' point. Someone who doesn't like rape, however, shouldn't be obligated to consent to rape RP happening everywhere around them on a WoD game, however, because while it is a horror present in the world, it is absolutely not the central theme, antagonist, or driving force of the game, so labeling 'rape in plot, be advised' keeps those sensitive out, and permits those comfortable with that aspect of theme to engage as they will.

@faraday First... I really wish people would google that case before citing it as an example of absurdity. The warning on the linked image in this article is not for the lulz. https://www.2keller.com/library/the-mcdonalds-hot-coffee-lawsuit-do-you-know-what-really-happened-.cfm (There's a whole movie about this.)

The games you've run, from what I gather, don't often tread into triggery territory in the ways many people think of it. I don't recall if you mentioned running, or playing on, the one historical war game set in one of the world wars or not -- but that would be the closest I could think of from the games I've heard you mention that might warrant a tag here or there -- mostly because we do have a lot of active duty military in the hobby and there are some folks who may want a heads up if today's plot involves something along the lines of a gas attack or land mines (since there are people who we play with who have been through these things, or the very real threat of them, within the last decade). For instance, I would be inclined to mention, 'hey, tonight's GM'd scene involves a raid and rescue mission in a concentration camp; be advised' on a WWII game -- and I do not consider this in the least bit unreasonable to give players a heads-up about so they can self-police to their sensitivities. I'm not talking about labeling for every possible phobia or personal dislike here, but common extremes.

@Lisse24 I always figure it's best to have a general category for a pref -- and space for people to write what they want, rather than a checklist. So people could write whatever they wanted, at whatever length or level of detail they wanted. I've seen a lot of 'maybe, page and ask' on Shang, for instance, in +kinks, on things that people sometimes like but only under very specific circumstances they don't want to advertise, or if it's something that's great when they're in the mood for it but it's no-nay-never on a normal day, and so on.

The non-confrontational part is kinda huge, too. Some people are awkward bringing things up -- but even more often, I've noticed that people are awkward at explaining something when they're put on the spot. More people are willing to say, 'hey, this is a bit uncool for me' than are really able to explain what exactly isn't working when they are in that moment of active discomfort. When someone can explain themselves in a calm, unchallenged, pressure-free state of mind, it's a lot easier. There's no potential pressure to explain quickly to not hold up a scene and maybe miss something or get tongue-tied and potentially run into a misunderstanding, there's a little less chance for someone to feel pressured to omit something just to 'go along' and not stir the pot, and so on. When something comes up in scene, something's already wrong. It may be very wrong. And while it's important for people to speak up, sometimes it really is easier to have that written down somewhere and point rather than try to explain oneself when you're already upset, and know you run the risk of upsetting the other person by interrupting or disrupting as an added pressure on top.

@faraday I really don't see the lines/veils thing as something as useful in formally run scenes and events as I do in 'downtime' or pick-up RP, which tends to be a lot more improvisational, smaller scale, and involves fewer people at any given time. It's also often what many people do a lot more of with their game time than formally run scenes or events. (Unless everybody is just idling in their rooms and chatting on channels between events, in which case you have bigger problems, really, than any of this stuff.)

Labeling an event with whatever common triggers it is LIKELY to contain is, IMHO, better for that, with the proviso that other things may occur if brought up for some reason by other players in the scene, and a general understanding (or policy because common sense ain't so common) that 'please contain whatever commonly triggery bullshit you plan to do to the stuff on the list k thx' amongst the participants.

At that point, it is on the person who likes those things to show up, or the person who dislikes them to stay away.

It is not my problem as a scene runner if I label a plot 'the endless goldfish massacre full of acres and acres of rancid dead goldfish long past their expiration date and the even ickier sea monsters that love them' and Sally, the goldfish lover who can't abide the very notion of fish dying ever since that tragic forgotten flush incident in kindergarten decides to show up; that's on Sally. The world does not, and should not, revolve around Sally. Sally should get a heads-up so Sally may police her own involvement, to the best of anyone's reasonable ability, so that the entirety of the playerbase is not hostage to only engaging in roleplay that would be fun for Sally, whether Sally shows up or not.

There's obvious additions here: FTB, Door is Always Open. Those two are really nothing new for the hobby. I don't know how I'd code a 'light' system personally; I think that's better left to talking it out or paging a heads-up to the scene runner or dropping OOC to discuss it, as it is fundamentally the same thing anyway. One can simply say 'red/yellow/green', after all, and the meaning would come across, or 'yellow on the goldfish reek, green on the sea monsters that love them, red red red on OH GOD WHAT IS THAT SQUID DOING OVER THERE THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!!' as needs be.

@Roz You pretty much nailed it, from my perspective, at least.

From where I sit -- and I really don't care if somebody else doesn't feel the same way about it, everyone has their own way of doing stuff -- I feel that anything that can help in regard to this issue is worth my time. And it's for precisely that reason, really: everyone has their own way of doing stuff, and that includes players and their comfort zones re: expressing what their comfort zones even are.

There's also just some stuff it can head off at the pass. Sure, someone may not read. Sure, someone may miss an updated addition or change. Nothing at all is foolproof, even in-scene OOC chat. Even if it prevents 5% of instances of this, and that's probably a pretty lowball estimate, that's still a lot of grief people aren't having to contend with over the lifespan of a game.

Even so, if literally one person writes, "I do not want to RP around the subject of X and do not want it brought up around me in a scene," and another person reads it, and refrains from bringing it up or RPing it around that person, thus sparing everybody the associated angst it might entail to whatever degree, the time spent to put that tool in place has been worthwhile to me personally.

I also just think it's handy. <shrug> People who run scenes are often asking for means of polling the playerbase for topics of interest, and you get two birds with one stone here. If the only practical downside is 'my potentially wasted time', well... uhm, how often do I post here? <shifty-eyes, and shuffles off stage left, whistling innocently to herself>

@Ganymede Prefs of the kind described (even in +kinks code on Shang, which allows for notes) handle the 'lines and veils' aspect quite well: it's a list people can establish and adapt as needed to be used as a reference.

That's one piece; the stoplight/ftb aspect described after is a different piece entirely, and addresses in-scene communication.

We're describing two very different things and I have not suggested that one can -- or even should -- replace the other.

@Ganymede The stuff I set up was on the wiki, on somebody's page, in one of the little collapse sections. (Like BITN had, pretty much, if you remember those.)

It just also was piped to the game, so you could check it for a specific character from on-game or on-wiki.

You could also browse subjects themselves on the wiki, so a scene runner looking for ideas of what players presently active on the game were into, and could choose something with a lot of interest when crafting their plots. I never got around to 'pull the generic subject lists to the game' side, since that was way more complicated, but it could certainly be done.

@faraday It may not be worth it to some, but I've seen it used for many years now to good effect on Shang in the actual +kinks format, which includes a lot of stuff more sensitive and/or controversial than the usual collection of general subjects and/or triggers.

Having made a setup that works in terms of the 'make the code/set it up for people to use' side, even as someone code clueless and fumbling it really wasn't at all onerous. (It may not be a system others would ever want to have or use, since it was designed to integrate with everything else I was doing, and doing more or less the same way, but that's neither here nor there.)

Some people will use it and some people won't. Some people will get a benefit out of it, and some people won't. To some extent, this is a matter of 'you get out what you put in'.

For games like WoD -- which the stuff in the original post is in reference to -- some intensely dark and potentially problematic subject matter is extremely prevalent. (Some other themes have the same issue, but not all.) It is a very common sentiment among players in these themes that 'it happens in the world and if you don't want that thrown in your face on a whim in a random pick-up scene some idle afternoon, go home, you big baby'. That attitude is not especially conducive to collaborative play, especially in an environment with a variety of scene runners rather than a single person leading a tabletop campaign that can better familiarize themselves with the sensitivities of a small number of consistent players, and it's a good thing that there's something at least semi-official from the publisher of the material that acknowledges the importance of player comfort and suggests options for means of indicating comfort or lack thereof with any given material.

That they're suggesting this for a small group with just one person who has to keep track of the information from maybe a half dozen players -- which is much easier than what many M*s have to contend with -- says it can be helpful. It doesn't say it's necessary, but I can guarantee you that anything I ever put together, I'm going to consider it well worth the effort to include. If it spares one scene runner from spending forever building a plot that it turns out no one has a shred of interest in (which they could have found out by checking interest in that subject on a subject page on the wiki) or one person doesn't have a PTSD trigger thrown in their face out of the blue because they wrote down 'I have a severe phobia of X, please do not pose about X around me' and one person bothered to read it, I will consider that time and effort more than well spent on my part. YMMV.

@Ganymede A prefs system is a good communication tool. It is not, and should never be considered to be, a communication replacement.

@Thenomain Possible, it's a post-surgery day and the brains are a little hazy.

Though that this is coming up really makes me want to work on stuff again because I really liked the way I had this set up, and showing it would be easier than explaining it. (Which, for the moment, I am also going to blame on the painkillers turning my brain to jam, because I am so not there, despite the come-and-go case of twitchy fingers eager to prod things.)

I am really happy there's something at least semi-official that's addressing this issue. It's long overdue, in part because I am reasonably certain most of this has long just been considered common sense on the part of the writers. In the back-when days, I saw this come out on a host of different subjects we all fight about in the MU take on WoD re: 'we shouldn't have to tell people that!!!', though not this one specifically. Hopefully this will serve as a wake-up call to the folks who insist on a free-for-all where everything is permissible and anybody who doesn't like it is 'doing it wrong', and will make it into the core materials going forward as well in some form.

@Thenomain No argument there -- I called it +prefs in the setup I was working on as well, since there was no reason to go into all the sexual details.

Referring to the system, though, +kinks (as code) is at its core a preference system, structurally, and does include non-sexual preference info as well.

@Thenomain Kinks, the word, and +kinks, the coded system, are different things.

Kinks are the dictionary definition.

+kinks is a coded system of RP preferences that includes dictionary-definition kinks, and also general roleplay preferences for generic subject matter.

@Thenomain I think it's not so much kinks as in sexual kinks, but +kinks, which, at its core, is just a prefs system that has general RP topic and identity preferences, then a lot more specific kinky preferences listed. It's not hard to keep the topic and identity preferences, and swap out the naughty wishlist for general triggers and expanded general interest subjects.

@Thenomain said in Indicating Discomfort in a Scene (online):

@Misadventure said in Indicating Discomfort in a Scene (online):

Is there a coded way to have something like the stoplights always displayed?

Of course. We take the MUD/Nuku style of updating the information onto your screen after every time you type something. Or you take the web-page style. Or you update everyone who is either new to the scene, when the scene changes, or when someone changes their position.

I could see the veils and lines thing being a list set up by staff

I could see this something called "RP Prefs", as you mention via invoking 'kinks'.

This is exactly the kind of thing I was trying to do with the prefs system I was working on.

It just doubled as a space where people could express what they really liked, too, so STs could use it as a reference/resource game-wide to see what kind of plots people were (or weren't) interested in, so they could best develop things they knew they could gain an audience for (and not waste time on something no one was into) and maximize fun while minimizing problems.

@Cupcake It is still #2 on my list of 'if I do a thing... ' Pirates first, if I can get my oomph back some day. But yeah. Low focus on the tech, high focus on the story for the characters, with a smattering of weirdness and mysticism that gets all the weirder when it comes into contact with the mysteries of the universe. Grid would have been oddly easy -- the caravan of ships themselves -- with a 'landing site of the week/month/whichever' as a room or two of a world that could be redesced as needed for wherever they were doing their schtick for the crowd.

Would have likely been super niche, but for the kind of stories that would exist in a world like that, I think a small crowd that works together well and has reason to get invested in everybody else as much as possible and had to work together as much as possible would have actually helped create the best vibe for it as a game on the whole.

I always wanted to have a paintball game on my old alt on Reno1. She had been given a paintball gun in a scene, in an attempt to shoot her then-regnant, so he could prove to her that she didn't need to be as frightened for him as she was at the time. (I don't recall why exactly at the moment, only that she was. She could have used a real gun and he still would have probably been able to laugh it off, but she never would have fired it and he was aware of that.) She couldn't, of course, hit him to save her damn life.

This did not stop me from suddenly wanting to have paintball be A Thing on the unused floor of her building, which she had originally planned to renovate as an apartment until the idea of 'all around windows in your living space' became a spectacularly bad idea.

It would have been fucking perfect for paintball, tho.

While that player and I certainly parted on mutually unfriendly terms, I still appreciate that the paintball thing came up, because it was quite ICly smart, and it would have been highly entertaining if anybody had ever been willing to come practice shooting on the abandoned top floor of her building with paintball guns. At each other. Because there is nothing better to harmlessly vent any pent-up aggressions than shooting someone in the ass with neon green paint.

On Shang, someone I played with for ages wanted to run an IC WoD game. This was funny to us collectively because in our RP circle was a regenerating mutant, a werewolf, a wereraven, a witch, a few ++ mortal types, and a couple of vampires. The jokes about how everybody would be RP-in-RPing every other 'type' actually represented in the group IC was fucking funny and the number of fist-fights that would have broken out over horrifying misrepresentations (while my alt likely would have spent her time begging everybody else to get along, and, as the regenerator, dying MULTIPLE TIMES OVER while inadvertently stepping in the way of said amongst-supers fights).